Introduction

R is a programming language and environment for statistical computing.

Most of the R environment and its source code are currently available under the GNU GPL license (http://www.r-project.org/about.html). Note that none of the components of the R environment constitute “unrestricted freeware”; instead they are available only under the terms of specific licenses that the users who intend to download those applications need to accept prior to downloading and with which they need to comply. Also, those licenses can change over time and, therefore, users are cautioned to thoroughly familiarize themselves with the terms every time they download any components of the R environment.

COMadaptR, licensed under LGPL (>=2.1) with parts under GPL2, facilitates communication to the R world. It is available to download from https://tran.tibco.com/statistica/. This package is based on the GPL2/LGPL2 version of an earlier application, the statconnDCOM library.

Statistica can interface with R via COMadaptR facilitating bidirectional data transfer and presentation of resulting outputs.

This interface makes it possible for all Statistica products to provide comprehensive support for interaction with the R platform, providing the ability to:

  • run R scripts within the Statistica environment, sending results to Statistica Reports, Workbooks, and Graphs
  • process Statistica data sets in R and import tabular results from R into Statistica Spreadsheets
  • creating R nodes that can be managed with a metadata store and within templates; versioned, approved, audit logged
  • utilize R in Statistica Server

Note: It is the user's responsibility to ensure compliance with terms of all applicable licenses for R and all components of the R environment. Always carefully review all the license agreements before accepting them as they can change over time.

Automatic installation of the COMadaptR support library is included in Statistica 12.0 SP3 and above when Internet access is available. When Statistica starts and detects that an R installation is present, the application will ask the user for permission to download and install from https://tran.tibco.com/statistica/.

Read the KB article, Manually enabling Statistica-R Integration for Statistica, for manual installation instructions for the COMadaptR support library.

You can verify that the COMadaptR library is installed correctly and that all its dependencies are satisfied by running one of the R examples that accompany Statistica. After all the required third-party components are installed, you should be able to open and execute R scripts within the Statistica environment (on the File tab, click Open Examples and browse to the R folder).

R is highly extensible. Users can submit libraries (packages) implementing a set of functions, usually for a specific area of their expertise or research. The R community maintains several centralized repositories that make hundreds of such packages readily available to all users over the Internet. Many of these packages cater specifically to highly specialized audiences with particular data analysis needs.