I am storing data in Azure and plan to do a lot of the updates (adding, removing and changing records) from R. This is because I’ve already written extensive code in R and don’t currently have the time to re-write it all in SQL.

This approach is mostly fine, as I can use the dbReadTable(), dbWriteTable() and dbAppendTable() functions from the DBI package to push and pull data. However, I can’t find a way to add variables to an Azure table from R. I can do it from Microsoft SQL Server, but ideally would want to do it from R.

I’ve tried using dbWriteTable() to add the columns but it attempts to write a new table. When I use dbAppendTable(), I can easily add rows, but when I try to add data with the columns I want added, I get an error.

Any suggestions are helpful!