tidytlg
A tables-listings-graphs package that reached CRAN and then went quiet.
Comparison · Analytics
orbital vs riem
A side-by-side editorial comparison of orbital and riem — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:r-package
orbital vs riem: at a glance
What is orbital?
Turning fitted tidymodels into SQL, one model family at a time — and the boosting engines just landed.
orbital converts a fitted tidymodels workflow into a database expression so prediction runs where the data lives, no R session in the loop. Its value is entirely a function of coverage, and 0.5.0 was the largest coverage release yet: catboost and lightgbm boosted trees, rpart decision trees, earth-backed MARS, glmnet multinomial regression, and both randomForest and ranger random forests, all for numeric, class, and probability predictions. The 0.5.1 follow-up is corrective, fixing SQL that Snowflake and other engines rejected because it cast booleans directly to numeric.
What is riem?
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
riem pulls observations from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's weather-station network. Its release history is two threads: successive rewrites of the HTTP and test-mocking stack, and a gradual tightening of function arguments that culminated in 1.0.0 removing convenient-but-dangerous defaults. Contributions come partly from IEM's own maintainer.
orbital vs riem: editorial side-by-side
orbital
0.0ANALYTICS
Turning fitted tidymodels into SQL, one model family at a time — and the boosting engines just landed.
◆ Current state
orbital converts a fitted tidymodels workflow into a database expression so prediction runs where the data lives, no R session in the loop. Its value is entirely a function of coverage, and 0.5.0 was the largest coverage release yet: catboost and lightgbm boosted trees, rpart decision trees, earth-backed MARS, glmnet multinomial regression, and both randomForest and ranger random forests, all for numeric, class, and probability predictions. The 0.5.1 follow-up is corrective, fixing SQL that Snowflake and other engines rejected because it cast booleans directly to numeric.
◆ Where it's heading
The package has been working outward in rings: recipe preprocessing steps first, then model types, then post-processing via the tailor package in 0.4.0, with show_query() added so users can inspect what actually gets sent. Recent releases show the constraint shifting from R-side translation to SQL dialect compatibility — the bugs now are about what a specific database will accept, not whether a model can be expressed. estimate_orbital_size() in 0.5.1 acknowledges the other practical limit, since generated expressions can grow large enough to matter before you generate them.
◆ Prediction
With the major boosting and ensemble engines covered, expect the next releases to keep chasing dialect-specific SQL correctness across warehouses rather than adding model families.
riem
0.0ANALYTICS
A weather-data client that keeps rewriting its HTTP layer while slowly tightening its API.
◆ Current state
riem pulls observations from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet's weather-station network. Its release history is two threads: successive rewrites of the HTTP and test-mocking stack, and a gradual tightening of function arguments that culminated in 1.0.0 removing convenient-but-dangerous defaults. Contributions come partly from IEM's own maintainer.
◆ Where it's heading
The HTTP thread has moved through httr to httr2, and mocking from vcr to httptest2 — following the broader rOpenSci HTTP-stack reorganisation rather than any need of its own. The API thread runs the other way: 1.0.0 removed defaults for date_start and station and flipped latlon to FALSE, trading convenience for callers being explicit about what they request. New arguments in the same release widened what a query can ask for.
◆ Prediction
With the API stabilised at 1.0.0 and the HTTP stack settled on httr2, the next release is more likely to expose additional IEM query parameters than to change plumbing again.
Alternatives to orbital and riem
Other Analytics products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either orbital or riem.
Tplyr
Tplyr made clinical summary tables explain where every number came from.
rlistings
Clinical listings that keep inheriting their hardest problem — pagination — from the layer below.
hoardr
A cache-directory helper that has shipped nothing but CRAN-triggered patches for seven years.
gigs
gigs redesigned its whole conversion API for rOpenSci, then spent three releases getting the docs to build.
datasetjson
datasetjson rebuilt its object model to track the CDISC Dataset-JSON 1.1 schema.
See all orbital alternatives → · See all riem alternatives →
Recent activity from orbital and riem
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1mo agoorbitalSnowflake-compatible SQL for dummy and NA steps
- 5mo agoorbitalcatboost, lightgbm, ranger and four more model families translate to SQL ⚡
- 8mo agoorbitalCompatibility with new xgboost versions
- 8mo agoorbitalPost-processing adjustments from tailor become translatable
- 11mo agoorbitalPCA step translation bugs cleared
- 1y agoriem1.0.0 removes defaults and adds query arguments
- 1y agoorbitalClass and probability predictions arrive, with glm and xgboost
- 1y agoriemDrops the last vcr usage in favour of httptest2
- 2y agoriemTimezone and timestamp-parsing fixes
- 4y agoriemMoves to httr2 and httptest2
- 4y agoriemSwitches to newer IEM metadata web services
- 9y agoriemReduces dependencies to tibble alone
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between orbital and riem?
Both compete on the same themes — r-package — within Analytics. orbital and riem are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is orbital better than riem?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. orbital and riem are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 0.0 vs 0.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Analytics products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to orbital?
Top orbital alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "orbital alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/orbital for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to riem?
Top riem alternatives in Analytics are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "riem alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/riem for the full list with editorial commentary on each.