Interacting with local and remote data repositories using the stashR package

The stashR package (a Set of Tools for Administering Shared Repositories) for R implements a basic versioned key-value style database where character string keys are associated with data values. Using the S4 classes ‘localDB’ and ‘remoteDB’, and associated methods, versioned key-value databases can be either created locally on the user’s computer or accessed remotely via the Internet. The stashR package can enhance reproducible research by providing a ‘localDB’ database format for the caching of computations which can subsequently be stored on the Internet. To reproduce a particular computation, a reader can access the ‘remoteDB’ database and obtain the associated R objects.