rmysql return data type

Question

I am extracting some data from a db using R and RMySQL and the dates come back as factors. I then have to call as.Date() on this column. Because there are a lot of records, this takes a long time. Is there a way to strong type the return values from fetch? That is, just like read.csv, for example, allows you to specify column types to prevent R from automatically trying to recognize them, is there something like this available? The dates in my db are typed as Date.

Answer 1

Bad luck. The RMySQL documentation has this to say: "Time variables are imported/exported as character data, so you need to convert these to your favorite date/time representation." So you'll always have to convert.

RODBC seems to properly support dates tough.