intro.qmd

# Getting started with working databases from R

In this first half of the book we will see how we can work with databases from R. In the following chapters we'll see that when working with data held in a relational database we can leverage various open-source R packages to help us perform tidyverse-style data analyses.

-   In @sec-databases_and_r we will perform a simple data analysis from start to finish using a table in a database.
-   In @sec-dbplyr_verbs we will see in more detail how familiar dplyr functions can be used to combine data spread across different tables in a database into an analytic dataset which we can then bring into R for further analysis.
-   In @sec-tidyverse_expressions we will see how we can perform more complex data manipulation via translation of R code into SQL specific to the database management system being used.
-   In @sec-dbplyr_packages we will see how we can build data pipelines by creating a data model in R to represent the relational database we're working with and creating functions and methods to work with it.