The second release of the Databricks Unified Analytics Platform highlights the growing popularity of R as a programming language of choice among Apache® Spark™ developers. The new release, coming just months after the inaugural release of the Databricks PaaS, simplifies the process for R programmers by offering simplified deployment and visualizations. It reflects the reality that the Spark compute engine must address multiple constituencies, from the large base of SQL practitioners to highly skilled programmers writing programmatic analytics.