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My employer historically used R:BASE to store important information, but we no longer have access to the program and the data are sitting unused. It's four files (survey.rx1, survey.rx2, survey.rx3, and survey.rx4) that together form a relational database. I believe these are binary data from searching for information on the program and ".rx" extension.

I would like to convert these data into a format that is usable in R or Excel (.csv, .xls, .xlsx, .RDS, etc.), but the free trial version of R:BASE does not allow exports and trying to import the data into MS Excel isn't working (using the get data, from file, from folder feature. It recognizes it as binary and shows some metadata but doesn't display the actual content).

Trying to read these data in R I explored using readBin, but am struggling to determine an appropriate value for "what" as the columns represent different modes and I don't have a connection object to provide that information. I explored using RevoScaleR which looked like it could be relevant but the Documentation says it was built on R 3.5.2 and the Machine Learning Server you need to run it is no longer being supported as of this year.

So, if anyone knows how to convert these data or knows of a free alternative to R:BASE that works for these data types I would be very appreciative. Thank you!

IRTFM
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Andrew Bade
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  • https://www.rbase.com/services/ConsultingServices.php (And I see no reason why RevoScaleR should have any relevance to this task. R:BASE has no connection to R.) – IRTFM Apr 28 '22 at 15:33
  • @IRTFM Thanks. I understand there is no connection. There is a function in RevoScaleR called rxImport (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/machine-learning-server/r-reference/revoscaler/rximport) that showed up in searches on how to convert .rx files. Hence me including it as background in my question. – Andrew Bade Apr 28 '22 at 16:27
  • The problem remains that none of those formats are used by R:BASE. I think the “x” in that function name refers to the proprietary .XDF data type that RevoR employed. – IRTFM Apr 28 '22 at 22:28

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