Hi all,
Here are some updates on the DataSHIELD infrastructure side 
:
Opal 5.3
- Improved Kubernetes integration with remote R session management,
- Built-in support of MS SQL Server databases.
DSI 1.8, DSOpal 1.5, opalr 3.5
Since remote R session creation can be time consuming when performed in a Kubernetes environment, DSI has to be able to give some feedback about this process progress, per DataSHIELD analysis node. The new DSI allows to create DataSHIELD remote R sessions (with async mode support) with progress feedback and independently from assign/aggregate operations, as specified by RFC: Extension of the Datashield Interface (DSI) for Remote R Session Management. See usage example of the new datashield.sessions function, that can be explicitly called (optional).
The DSOpal implementation takes advantage of the new Kubernetes feature in Opal 5.3. DSI remains backward compatible with backends that do not implement this new interface (e.g. Armadillo, DSLite or older Opal).
odbc.resourcer 1.0
This new resourcer R package allows extraction of tables from a MS SQL Server into data frames. It complements Opal’s MS SQL Server support as a resource-based alternative. The package is included by default in the latest datashield/rock-base Docker image.
In Opal, the user interface for provisioning such resource will look like this:
See details in odbc.resourcer documentation.
Regards
Yannick