This is a very gentle book. It provides a first look at things like HTML, XML, SQL and other supposedly arcane technologies used in data storage, retrieval and manipulation. Coming from Paul Murrell, it has a delicately humorous, slightly quirky slant in some of the examples he chooses, but maintaining full relevance. There is a little bit on R included, but almost as an afterthought. It is not a book abour R. The book is clearly intended to be a teaching resource for a component of a modern statistics subject, probably at second or (honours) first year. I found the pace a little slow, but then, I'm no longer a student!

The entire text of the book has been released electronically and, in the spirit of R itself, is free. You just can't sell it. So classes using the text could be expected to have their own electronic materials. A search on something like "Paul Murrell Data Technonogies" should locate it quickly enough.