It is trivial with RODBC (I know that is not what you asked, but it is the solution we found first).
For RMySQL, note first that the MySQL configuration file is consulted, so the default host is specified in the client section, which is like [client] port=3306 [mysql] default-character-set=latin1 Add host=foo under [client] to change the default host. And ?dbConnect mentions a 'host' argument under '...'. That seems to work for me (provided of course the server allows connections from other machines): on my home network from Windows laptop to Linux server > library(RMySQL) Loading required package: DBI > drv <- dbDriver("MySQL") > con <- dbConnect(drv, user="ripley", host="auk", dbname="ripley") This mixture of using the *local* configuration file overridden by arguments is a bit dangerous: RMySQL seems not really designed for client-server operation and there are some things that definitely do not work. (As I recall, that included dbWrite as that imports a file which is on the local machine.) On Fri, 14 Dec 2007, Adrian Dusa wrote: > Dear list, > > I learned how to connect R to a local MySQL server, using: > drv <- dbDriver("MySQL") > con <- dbConnect(drv, user="root", password="mypass", dbname="mydb") > > Is it possible to connect R in this way to an external server (on a different > machine, with a different IP)? > > I read the documentation on ?dbConnect (and everything I could find on the > internet), but I failed to find some other relevant arguments. For example, > one needs to first connect to the external machine and only after that to the > MySQL server on that machine. Is this possible from within R? > > Thank you in advance, > Adrian > > -- Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.