title: Parallel Database calls with RODBC
body: <p>I am operating on chunks of panel data with about 3*10^6 rows and 11 columns.  This data is stored in a SQL database (the data I use is a subset of an even larger dataset).  I want to process chunks of the data (each date seperately) without importing the entire thing all at once, but the operations I have to run on each chunk are computationally intensive, so I would like to use the <strong>foreach</strong> package.  </p>
  
  <p>However, I am running into some problems with running the sql call in parallel.  If I do a simple call such as (<code>sqlQuery(channel, "select 1")</code>) I can run that in parallel.  If I do a more complex statement I get SIGPIPE errors.  Has anyone else run into similar problems?</p>