I've been playing with the OpenFootball data using ROE. ROE provides RAArrayRelation, which shares a common superclass with RASQLRelation. As its name implies, RAArrayRelation uses an in-memory array object and does not involve any underlying SQL database.

In my OpenFootball data crunching, I tried JOINing instances of both. When the left side of the JOIN is the RASQLiteRelation instance, the operation threw an SQLite exception "no such table" because ROE expected the right side to also be an RASQLiteRelation on the same underlying database. When the left side is the RAArrayRelation instance, the operation sends #tuples to the right side, which resulted in a DNU. I've tried a few implementations of RASQLiteRelation>>tuples, but so far no success. Even if I get a working implementation, the implication of #tuples is that all matching rows from the SQLite database are loaded into memory, which is not always performant or feasible.

The reason for using an RAArrayRelation is to create a new relation unlike any existing one. The alternative is to create an RASQLiteRelation instance on a new, empty table. However, ROE does not support creating tables in the underlying database. Of course, I can use the given database connection to CREATE TABLE via direct SQL, but that doesn't feel satisfying.