Will creating reports on R using MySQL Database update my database on MySQL?
When you copy data from MySQL into rstudio (or your UI of choice), r pulls the data into memory. 

When you then manipulate the data (by adding extra columns, for example), this happens entirely in memory &amp; the source data (in your case a MySQL query, but it could just as easily have been from a csv file etc) is not modified in any way.

r is wonderful, but requires a slightly different way of thinking than SQL - hope you’re enjoying it.