R connection to Redshift using AWS driver doesn't work but does work with Postgre driver <p>I am trying establish a connection to my redshift database after following the example provided by AWS <a href="https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/bigdata/post/Tx1G8828SPGX3PK/Connecting-R-with-Amazon-Redshift" rel="nofollow">https://blogs.aws.amazon.com/bigdata/post/Tx1G8828SPGX3PK/Connecting-R-with-Amazon-Redshift</a>. However, I get errors when trying to establish the connection using their recommended driver. However, when I use the Postgre driver I can establish a connection to the redshift DB. </p> <p>AWS says their driver is "optimized for performance and memory management", so I would rather use it. Can someone please review my code below, and let me know if they see something wrong? I suspect that I am not setting the URL up correctly, but not sure what I should be using instead? Thanks in advance for any help. </p> <pre><code>#' This code attempts to establish a connection to redshift database. It #' attempts to establish a connection using the suggested redshift but doesn't #' work. ## Clear up space and set working directory #Clear Variables rm(list=ls(all=TRUE)) gc() ## Libriries for analyis library(RJDBC) library(RPostgreSQL) #Create DBI driver for working with redshift driver directly # download Amazon Redshift JDBC driver download.file('http://s3.amazonaws.com/redshift-downloads/drivers/RedshiftJDBC41-1.1.9.1009.jar', 'RedshiftJDBC41-1.1.9.1009.jar') # connect to Amazon Redshift using specific driver driver_redshift &lt;- JDBC("com.amazon.redshift.jdbc41.Driver", "RedshiftJDBC41-1.1.9.1009.jar", identifier.quote="`") ## Using postgre connection that works #postgre driver driver_postgre &lt;- dbDriver("PostgreSQL") #establish connection conn_postgre &lt;- dbConnect(driver_postgre, host="nhdev.c6htwjfdocsl.us-west-2.redshift.amazonaws.com", port="5439",dbname="dev", user="xxxx", password="xxxx") #list the tables available tables = dbListTables(conn_postgre) ## Use URL option to establish connection like the example on AWS website # url &lt;- "&lt;JDBCURL&gt;:&lt;PORT&gt;/&lt;DBNAME&gt;?user=&lt;USER&gt;&amp;password=&lt;PW&gt; # url &lt;- "jdbc:redshift://demo.ckffhmu2rolb.eu-west-1.redshift.amazonaws.com # :5439/demo?user=XXX&amp;password=XXX" #useses example from AWS instructions #url using my redshift database url &lt;- "jdbc:redshift://nhdev.c6htwjfdocsl.us-west-2.redshift.amazonaws.com :5439/dev?user=xxxx&amp;password=xxxx" #attempt connect but gives an error conn_redshift &lt;- dbConnect(driver_redshift, url) #gives the following error: # Error in .jcall(drv@jdrv, "Ljava/sql/Connection;", "connect", as.character(url)[1], : # java.sql.SQLException: Error message not found: CONN_GENERAL_ERR. Can't find bundle for base name com.amazon.redshift.core.messages, locale en ## Similier to postgre example that works but doesn't work when using redshift specific driver #gives an error saying url is missing, but I am not sure which url to use? conn &lt;- dbConnect(driver_redshift, host="nhdev.c6htwjfdocsl.us-west-2.redshift.amazonaws.com", port="5439",dbname="dev", user="xxxx", password="xxxx") # gives the following error: #Error in .jcall("java/sql/DriverManager", "Ljava/sql/Connection;", "getConnection", : # argument "url" is missing, with no default </code></pre>