Calling R Inline in a Report or ETL Script

Any R expression can be executed inline within a BQL query or ETL statement. You can do this in a report by using REXP in a column expression.  REXP contains two fields: the first determines the expected return type (Birst will cast the results to that type) and the second is the R expression to run.

Prior to calling R in a report, a session variable is required to instantiate the model. See Setting Up Sessions with R Initializers.

To call R inline in a report

1.

Open the report in Designer. For example, a report on car data:

2.

Add a column to this report that calls R to utilize a pre-created model to predict the speed of a car based on the stopping distance (model<-lm(formula=speed~dist,cars). Add a column to your report (you can add a second instance of a column you are already using) then click the column header and select Column Properties.

3.

Reference R in the Expression using REXP. In the example below, the expression references a metric to predict the estimated speed of a car based on stopping distance.

4.

Click Save in the dialog box. For example, this is the resulting report: