v3.0.0

autodb 3.0.0

Breaking changes

• discover has a rearranged argument list:
  • The accuracy argument is now optional, defaulting to one for exact dependency search. This reflects the reduced focus on approximate dependencies: the main autodb function doesn't allow for them anyway, and the new FDHits search algorithms can only search for exact dependencies.
  • Arguments specific to the DFD algorithm, including accuracy, have been moved to the back of the list, since they are of lesser priority.
  • The skip_bijections argument is now first in the DFD-specific arguments, since setting it to the non-default value speeds up the search, whereas doing so for the other non-accuracy parameters slows it down.
• insert methods no longer allow inserting data with duplicate column names, since this makes the expected result ambiguous.

Improvements

• The package has no remaining package dependencies; packages in Suggests are purely used for vignettes or testing. There is still an implicit dependency on GraphViz, if you use gv to export plotting code.
• discover has two variants on the FDHits search algorithm, as alternatives to DFD. FDHitsSep is now the default algorithm, since it's currently the quickest in general.
• Performance improvements:
  • relation and database methods for rename_attrs and gv now run significantly more quickly for large data sets, due to not re-running all the key validity checks.
  • The database method for reduce has unnecessary validity checks removed, so that it runs more quickly, especially for databases with a large number of records.
  • The database_schema and database methods for [ has unnecessary validity checks removed.
  • normalise has unnecessary closure calculations removed.
  • normalise, synthesise, autoref, and rejoin have improved performance, due to more efficient closure checks.
• decompose has a new check parameter, to allow skipping some validity checks if the data frame to decompose is the one used to create the schema.
• Handing for numerical/complex variables is more consistent:
  • Values are now rounded by significant digits, as intended, rather than by decimal places.
  • In addition to autodb, discover, and df_equiv, values are now also rounded for insert and decompose.
• Some relation error messages are more informative.
• The database method of reduce has a main argument, like the database_schema method. The previous behaviour, of taking the names of relations with the most records, is main's default.
• autodb, discover, decompose, and insert have a keep_rownames argument, to allow including the row names as a column, instead of the user including them manually.

Fixes

• The format method for relation now describes elements as relations, rather than schemas.
• autodb passes its progress_file argument on to discover; previously it passed "", so the progress messages for discover were printed to stdout.