Chapter 2 How to use this book

This chapter explains:

  • Getting the code used in this book
  • How you can contribute to the book project

This book is full of examples that you can replicate on your computer.

2.1 Retrieve the code from GitHub

The code to generate the book and the exercises it contains can be downloaded from this repo.

2.2 Read along, experiment as you go

We have never been sure whether we’re writing an expository book or a massive tutorial. You may use it either way. The best way to learn the material we cover is to experiment.

After the introductory chapters and the chapter that creates the persistent database, you can jump around and each chapter stands on its own.

2.3 Participating

2.3.1 Browsing the book

If you just want to read the book and copy / paste code into your working environment, simply browse to https://smithjd.github.io/sql-pet. If you get stuck, or find things aren’t working, open an issue at https://github.com/smithjd/sql-pet/issues/new/.

2.3.2 Diving in

If you want to experiment with the code in the book, run it in RStudio and interact with it, you’ll need to do two more things:

  1. Install the sqlpetr R package (Borasky et al. 2018). See https://smithjd.github.io/sqlpetr for the package documentation. Installation may take some time if it has to install or update packages not available on your computer.
  2. Clone the Git repository https://github.com/smithjd/sql-pet.git and open the project file sql-pet.Rproj in RStudio.

Enjoy!

References

Borasky, M. Edward (Ed), John David Smith, Scott Came, Jim Tyhurst, Dipti Muni, Mary Anne Thygesen, Sophie Yang, and Ian Frantz. 2018. Sqlpetr: Companion Package for R-Docker-Databases Book. https://github.com/smithjd/sqlpetr.