SQL代表结构化查询语言.它是从传统数据仓库和大数据技术中的数据库中提取数据的最广泛使用的语言之一.为了演示SQL的基础知识，我们将使用示例.为了专注于语言本身，我们将在R中使用SQL.在编写SQL代码方面，这与在数据库中完成的一样.
SQL的核心是三个语句:SELECT，FROM和WHERE.以下示例使用SQL的最常见用例.导航到文件夹 bda/part2/SQL_introduction 并打开 SQL_introduction.Rproj 文件.然后打开01_select.R脚本.为了在R中编写SQL代码，我们需要安装 sqldf 包，如下面的代码所示.
# Install the sqldf package
install.packages('sqldf')
# load the library
library('sqldf')
library(nycflights13)
# We will be working with the fligths dataset in order to introduce SQL
# Let’s take a look at the table
str(flights)
# Classes 'tbl_d', 'tbl' and 'data.frame': 336776 obs. of 16 variables:
# $ year : int 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 ...
# $ month : int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
# $ day : int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ...
# $ dep_time : int 517 533 542 544 554 554 555 557 557 558 ...
# $ dep_delay: num 2 4 2 -1 -6 -4 -5 -3 -3 -2 ...
# $ arr_time : int 830 850 923 1004 812 740 913 709 838 753 ...
# $ arr_delay: num 11 20 33 -18 -25 12 19 -14 -8 8 ...
# $ carrier : chr "UA" "UA" "AA" "B6" ...
# $ tailnum : chr "N14228" "N24211" "N619AA" "N804JB" ...
# $ flight : int 1545 1714 1141 725 461 1696 507 5708 79 301 ...
# $ origin : chr "EWR" "LGA" "JFK" "JFK" ...
# $ dest : chr "IAH" "IAH" "MIA" "BQN" ...
# $ air_time : num 227 227 160 183 116 150 158 53 140 138 ...
# $ distance : num 1400 1416 1089 1576 762 ...
# $ hour : num 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 ...
# $ minute : num 17 33 42 44 54 54 55 57 57 58 ...select语句用于从表中检索列并对其进行计算.最简单的SELECT语句在 ej1 中演示.我们还可以创建新变量，如 ej2 所示.
### SELECT statement
ej1 = sqldf("
SELECT
dep_time
,dep_delay
,arr_time
,carrier
,tailnum
FROM
flights
")
head(ej1)
# dep_time dep_delay arr_time carrier tailnum
# 1 517 2 830 UA N14228
# 2 533 4 850 UA N24211
# 3 542 2 923 AA N619AA
# 4 544 -1 1004 B6 N804JB
# 5 554 -6 812 DL N668DN
# 6 554 -4 740 UA N39463
# In R we can use SQL with the sqldf function. It works exactly the same as in
a database
# The data.frame (in this case flights) represents the table we are querying
and goes in the FROM statement
# We can also compute new variables in the select statement using the syntax:
# old_variables as new_variable
ej2 = sqldf("
SELECT
arr_delay - dep_delay as gain,
carrier
FROM
flights
")
ej2[1:5, ]
# gain carrier
# 1 9 UA
# 2 16 UA
# 3 31 AA
# 4 -17 B6
# 5 -19 DLSQL最常用的一个功能是group by语句.这允许计算另一个变量的不同组的数值.打开脚本02_group_by.R.
### GROUP BY
# Computing the average
ej3 = sqldf("
SELECT
avg(arr_delay) as mean_arr_delay,
avg(dep_delay) as mean_dep_delay,
carrier
FROM
flights
GROUP BY
carrier
")
# mean_arr_delay mean_dep_delay carrier
# 1 7.3796692 16.725769 9E
# 2 0.3642909 8.586016 AA
# 3 -9.9308886 5.804775 AS
# 4 9.4579733 13.022522 B6
# 5 1.6443409 9.264505 DL
# 6 15.7964311 19.955390 EV
# 7 21.9207048 20.215543 F9
# 8 20.1159055 18.726075 FL
# 9 -6.9152047 4.900585 HA
# 10 10.7747334 10.552041 MQ
# 11 11.9310345 12.586207 OO
# 12 3.5580111 12.106073 UA
# 13 2.1295951 3.782418 US
# 14 1.7644644 12.869421 VX
# 15 9.6491199 17.711744 WN
# 16 15.5569853 18.996330 YV
# Other aggregations
ej4 = sqldf("
SELECT
avg(arr_delay) as mean_arr_delay,
min(dep_delay) as min_dep_delay,
max(dep_delay) as max_dep_delay,
carrier
FROM
flights
GROUP BY
carrier
")
# We can compute the minimun, mean, and maximum values of a numeric value
ej4
# mean_arr_delay min_dep_delay max_dep_delay carrier
# 1 7.3796692 -24 747 9E
# 2 0.3642909 -24 1014 AA
# 3 -9.9308886 -21 225 AS
# 4 9.4579733 -43 502 B6
# 5 1.6443409 -33 960 DL
# 6 15.7964311 -32 548 EV
# 7 21.9207048 -27 853 F9
# 8 20.1159055 -22 602 FL
# 9 -6.9152047 -16 1301 HA
# 10 10.7747334 -26 1137 MQ
# 11 11.9310345 -14 154 OO
# 12 3.5580111 -20 483 UA
# 13 2.1295951 -19 500 US
# 14 1.7644644 -20 653 VX
# 15 9.6491199 -13 471 WN
# 16 15.5569853 -16 387 YV
### We could be also interested in knowing how many observations each carrier has
ej5 = sqldf("
SELECT
carrier, count(*) as count
FROM
flights
GROUP BY
carrier
")
ej5
# carrier count
# 1 9E 18460
# 2 AA 32729
# 3 AS 714
# 4 B6 54635
# 5 DL 48110
# 6 EV 54173
# 7 F9 685
# 8 FL 3260
# 9 HA 342
# 10 MQ 26397
# 11 OO 32
# 12 UA 58665
# 13 US 20536
# 14 VX 5162
# 15 WN 12275
# 16 YV 601SQL最有用的功能是连接.连接意味着我们希望将表A和表B组合在一个表中，使用一列来匹配两个表的值.有不同类型的连接，实际上，开始这些将是最有用的:内连接和左外连接.
# Let’s create two tables: A and B to demonstrate joins.
A = data.frame(c1 = 1:4, c2 = letters[1:4])
B = data.frame(c1 = c(2,4,5,6), c2 = letters[c(2:5)])
A
# c1 c2
# 1 a
# 2 b
# 3 c
# 4 d
B
# c1 c2
# 2 b
# 4 c
# 5 d
# 6 e
### INNER JOIN
# This means to match the observations of the column we would join the tables by.
inner = sqldf("
SELECT
A.c1, B.c2
FROM
A INNER JOIN B
ON A.c1 = B.c1
")
# Only the rows that match c1 in both A and B are returned
inner
# c1 c2
# 2 b
# 4 c
### LEFT OUTER JOIN
# the left outer join, sometimes just called left join will return the
# first all the values of the column used from the A table
left = sqldf("
SELECT
A.c1, B.c2
FROM
A LEFT OUTER JOIN B
ON A.c1 = B.c1
")
# Only the rows that match c1 in both A and B are returned
left
# c1 c2
# 1 <NA>
# 2 b
# 3 <NA>
# 4 c
