MonetDBLite for R is a SQL database that runs inside the R environment for statistical computing and does not require the installation of any external software. MonetDBLite is based on free and open-source MonetDB, a product of the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica.

MonetDBLite is similar in functionality to RSQLite, but typically completes queries blazingly fast due to its columnar storage architecture and bulk query processing model. Since both of these embedded SQL options rely on the the R DBI interface, the conversion of legacy RSQLite project syntax over to MonetDBLite code should be a cinch.

MonetDBLite works seamlessly with the dplyr grammar of data manipulation. For a detailed tutorial of how to work with database-backed dplyr commands, see the dplyr databases vignette. To reproduce this vignette using MonetDBLite rather than RSQLite, simply replace the functions ending with _sqlite with the suffix _monetdblite instead.