store matrix data in SQLite for fast retrieval in R - sql

Question

I have 48 matrices of dimensions 1,000 rows and 300,000 columns where each column has a respective ID, and each row is a measurement at one time point. Each of the 48 matrices is of the same dimension and their column IDs are all the same.
The way I have the matrices stored now is as RData objects and also as text files. I guess for SQL I'd have to transpose and store by ID, and in such case now the matrix would be of dimensions 300,000 rows and 1,000 columns.
I guess if I transpose it a small version of the data would look like this:
id1 1.5 3.4 10 8.6 .... 10 (with 1,000 columns, and 30,0000 rows now)
I want to store them in a way such that I can use R to retrieve a few of the rows (~ 5 to 100 each time).
The general strategy I have in mind is as follows:
(1) Create a database in sqlite3 using R that I will use to store the matrices (in different tables)
For file 1 to 48 (each file is of dim 1,000 rows and 300,000 columns):
(2) Read in file into R
(3) Store the file as a matrix in R
(4) Transpose the matrix (now its of dimensions 300,000 rows and 1,000 columns). Each row now is the unique id in the table in sqlite.
(5) Dump/write the matrix into the sqlite3 database created in (1) (dump it into a new table probably?)
Steps 1-5 are to create the DB.
Next, I need step 6 to read-in the database:
(6) Read some rows (at most 100 or so at a time) into R as a (sub)matrix.
A simple example code doing steps 1-6 would be best.
Some Thoughts:
I have used SQL before but it was mostly to store tabular data where each column had a name, in this case each column is just one point of the data matrix, I guess I could just name it col1 ... to col1000? or there are better tricks?
If I look at: http://sandymuspratt.blogspot.com/2012/11/r-and-sqlite-part-1.html they show this example:
dbSendQuery(conn = db,
"CREATE TABLE School
(SchID INTEGER,
Location TEXT,
Authority TEXT,
SchSize TEXT)")
But in my case this would look like:
dbSendQuery(conn = db,
"CREATE TABLE mymatrixdata
(myid TEXT,
col1 float,
col2 float,
.... etc.....
col1000 float)")
I.e., I have to type in col1 to ... col1000 manually, that doesn't sound very smart. This is where I am mostly stuck. Some code snippet would help me.
Then, I need to dump the text files into the SQLite database? Again, unsure how to do this from R.
Seems I could do something like this:
setwd(<directory where to save the database>)
db <- dbConnect(SQLite(), dbname="myDBname")
mymatrix.df = read.table(<full name to my text file containing one of the matrices>)
mymatrix = as.matrix(mymatrix.df)
Here I need to now the coe on how to dump this into the database...
Finally,
How to fast retrieve the values (without having to read the entire matrices each time) for some of the rows (by ID) using R?
From the tutorial it'd look like this:
sqldf("SELECT id1,id2,id30 FROM mymatrixdata", dbname = "Test2.sqlite")
But it the id1,id2,id30 are hardcoded in the code and I need to dynamically obtain them. I.e., sometimes i may want id1, id2, id10, id100; and another time i may want id80, id90, id250000, etc.
Something like this would be more approp for my needs:
cols.i.want = c("id1","id2","id30")
sqldf("SELECT cols.i.want FROM mymatrixdata", dbname = "Test2.sqlite")
Again, unsure how to proceed here. Code snippets would also help.
A simple example would help me a lot here, no need to code the whole 48 files, etc. just a simple example would be great!
Note: I am using Linux server, SQlite 3 and R 2.13 (I could update it as well).

Answer 1

In the comments the poster explained that it is only necessary to retrieve specific rows, not columns:
library(RSQLite)
m <- matrix(1:24, 6, dimnames = list(LETTERS[1:6], NULL)) # test matrix
con <- dbConnect(SQLite()) # could add dbname= arg. Here use in-memory so not needed.
dbWriteTable(con, "m", as.data.frame(m)) # write
dbGetQuery(con, "create unique index mi on m(row_names)")
# retrieve submatrix back as m2
m2.df <- dbGetQuery(con, "select * from m where row_names in ('A', 'C')
order by row_names")
m2 <- as.matrix(m2.df[-1])
rownames(m2) <- m2.df$row_names
Note that relational databases are set based and the order that the rows are stored in is not guaranteed. We have used order by row_names to get out a specific order. If that is not good enough then add a column giving the row index: 1, 2, 3, ... .
REVISED based on comments.