Yes, database access is probably not the strongest side of R.

I think part of the issue is that the typical use cases of Python and R are a bit different, so a lot of functionality that in case of Python comes in well-debugged and well-documented standard libraries, in case of R comes in relatively little-supported user packages.

Also, the standard package documentation system in R is absolutely atrocious; I am convinced that R would have been far better off without any package documentation standards at all.