DOC: doc updates for external compatibility

Author: jreback

doc/source/io.rst

@@ -1260,7 +1260,7 @@ To retrieve the *unique* values of an indexable or data column, use the method `
 
    concat([ store.select('df_dc',c) for c in [ crit1, crit2 ] ])
 
-**Table Object**
+**Storer Object**
 
 If you want to inspect the stored object, retrieve via ``get_storer``. You could use this progamatically to say get the number of rows in an object.
 
@@ -1363,8 +1363,26 @@ Notes & Caveats
 	# we have provided a minimum minor_axis indexable size
 	store.root.wp_big_strings.table
 
-Compatibility
-~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+External Compatibility
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+``HDFStore`` write storer objects in specific formats suitable for producing loss-less roundtrips to pandas objects. For external compatibility, ``HDFStore`` can read native ``PyTables`` format tables. It is possible to write an ``HDFStore`` object that can easily be imported into ``R`` using the ``rhdf5`` library. Create a table format store like this:
+
+     .. ipython:: python
+
+        store_export = HDFStore('export.h5')
+	store_export.append('df_dc',df_dc,data_columns=df_dc.columns)
+	store_export
+
+     .. ipython:: python
+        :suppress:
+ 
+        legacy_store.close()
+        import os
+        os.remove('store_export.h5')
+
+Backwards Compatibility
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
 0.10.1 of ``HDFStore`` is backwards compatible for reading tables created in a prior version of pandas however, query terms using the prior (undocumented) methodology are unsupported. ``HDFStore`` will issue a warning if you try to use a prior-version format file. You must read in the entire file and write it out using the new format, using the method ``copy`` to take advantage of the updates. The group attribute ``pandas_version`` contains the version information. ``copy`` takes a number of options, please see the docstring.
 

doc/source/v0.10.1.txt

@@ -119,6 +119,7 @@ Multi-table creation via ``append_to_multiple`` and selection via ``select_as_mu
 
 **Enhancements**
 
+- ``HDFStore`` now can read native PyTables table format tables
 - You can pass ``nan_rep = 'my_nan_rep'`` to append, to change the default nan representation on disk (which converts to/from `np.nan`), this defaults to `nan`.
 - You can pass ``index`` to ``append``. This defaults to ``True``. This will automagically create indicies on the *indexables* and *data columns* of the table
 - You can pass ``chunksize=an integer`` to ``append``, to change the writing chunksize (default is 50000). This will signficantly lower your memory usage on writing.