Welcome to the Rpad home page

Rpad is an interactive, web-based analysis program. Rpad pages are interactive workbook-type sheets based on R, an open-source implementation of the S language. Rpad is an analysis package, a web-page designer, and a gui designer all wrapped in one. Rpad makes it easy to develop powerful data analysis applications that can be shared with others (most likely on an intranet). The user doesn't have to install anything--everything's done through a browser.

• Obligatory screenshot

New Demos

• Data explorer -- searching, sorting, pivot tables, and lattice graphs
• Data modeler -- drag and drop interface to linear modeling
• Weather explorer -- shows another more custom data explorer

Google Code Hosting and Forum

Rpad is also now hosted at Google Code. This provides a forum for Rpad, SVN access to the development version of Rpad, and an issue tracker. The key links are:

• Main Rpad google code page
• Mailing list/Forum
• SVN source code repository

Dojo Version of Rpad

The client-side code for Rpad 1.x has been re-engineered. It is based on Dojo, a flexible javascript toolkit. The main advantages made possible by Dojo are:

• More cross platform--works on IE 6.0, FF 1.1, Konqueror 3.4.1, Opera 8.51, and maybe Safari (I can't test it)
• More interactive web pages (Dojo events) [Example]
• Dojo widgets (tabs, trees, combo boxes, ...)
• Much cleaner client-side code (easier to customize and maintain)

This new version also has a number of other improvements:

• Easier HTML code generation utilities within R [Example].
• The builtin mini webserver has been re-written. This reduces lockups of the server.
• For now, the default is not to have editable pages. This makes Rpad pages the most cross platform and bulletproof (bugfree). There is a new GUI that allows the user to change the page; it works on IE, Firefox, and others. Try it here (somewhat broken right now -- still needs some work).

The old client code is still present, so old pages *should* work without change (example). See here for a list of changes needed for new pages.

How to Run Rpad

Rpad can be set up with a webserver like Apache, or Rpad can be run locally using a built-in webserver. Install Rpad as an R package. Run it locally or install it on a server. To run it locally after installing the Rpad package into R [install.packages("Rpad")], just use the following to start Rpad from within R:

library(Rpad) 
Rpad()

This runs a mini webserver and launches your browser to an Rpad startup page. This version can also be installed server-style with Apache (tested on windows and linux) or another server.

Demonstrations

• Weather Explorer -- Explore relationships between weather station data and reliability indices (used by the IEEE Distribution Subcommittee's Task Force on weather normalization)
• Weather Modeling -- Models of weather impacts on reliability
• End-of-year SAIFI & SAIDI forecasts
• System-wide interruption summaries
• Feeder interruption history search
• Feeder mapping of interruptions

• Overhead line impedance calculator
• Stray voltage calculator
• Wind turbine flicker calculations

• General Example: shows a range of Rpad features
• Data Input Example: shows file uploads and input boxes
• GUI Examples: input boxes, server selects, radio buttons, and so on
• Imagemap: Shows interactive imagemaps
• Mapping: Highlight areas of a map

• R function/object search: search keywords, show online help, interactively run help examples

Documentation

• Basic usage and installation documentation

• Rpad & R reference card: a 4-page quick reference of common functions. Also available is a reference card just for R. [sources for both]

Download

Rpad is available at CRAN or here:

• Rpad 1.3.0.tar.gz package source
• Rpad 1.3.0.zip windows binary package

Debian packages that include the local and server versions (the easiest way to install the server version of Rpad):

• Rpad

Older versions: Downloads

Rpad is also available in Dirk Eddelbuettel's Quantian bootable live-DVD distribution.

Author

Rpad was created and implemented by Tom Short of EPRI who also currently maintains Rpad. Tom is also the author of the Electric Power Distribution Handbook by CRC Press. Many of the graphs and analysis done for this handbook were done in R.

Rpad is supported by EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute. EPRI is using Rpad to offer engineering, information, and database solutions to electric utilities.

Acknowledgements and Background

Rpad brings together several powerful open-source technologies, specifically:

• R -- R is a powerful processing environment based on the S language. R's strengths are graphics, data analysis, and flexibility. R offers advanced types of graphs, extreme flexibility, and precise, good-looking results. R offers sophisticated file manipulation capabilities, access to external databases, and many many data processing and statistical functions. The S language itself is very flexible, powerful, and extendible. Over 350 add-on packages are available at CRAN.
• Mozile -- This adds the contentEditable feature to Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox, so the user can edit Rpad pages. Add or modify tables, change formatting, or add documentation along with code -- Mozile makes this all possible.
• Statistics-R-0.02 -- A slightly modified version of Graciliano M. P.'s perl application does the hard work of communicating between the server and multiple instances of R.
• Apache and (optionally) mod_perl -- A server is a requirement. Other servers might work, but this combination is easy to get going.
• R2HTML [cran] -- Eric Lecoutre's R package provides HTML output for R scripts, including nicely formated table display of data frames.

All of these programs are free and open source. That means that you can change them, and they are freely redistributable.

Rpad License

Rpad is free and open source software. The components of Rpad have different licenses. Different licenses for different parts were chosen to be most compatible with the portions of code that they extend. For the most part, the code follows the following licenses:

• R code and Rpad pages -- GNU GPL license
• browser javascript code and server-side perl code -- BSD-type license