A “Dummy” SOAP Web Service

When dealing with SOAP in Caché, it is sometimes necessary to debug errors by directly accessing (and sometimes editing) the XML which is sent, i.e. the SOAP request and subsequent SOAP response. If you’re debugging a Caché web service, it is often useful to use a tool such as SoapUI (https://www.soapui.org/) to manually create and control the SOAP request, so that the effect of adjustments can easily be seen on the Caché web service.

In a conference call earlier this week, a customer described how they built an iKnow domain with clinical notes and now wanted to filter the contents of that domain based on the patient's diagnosis codes.

This short article was motivated by a problem of one of my customers. They use Ensemble to integrate many systems, some of them use just plain files.

So they naturally selected File Outbound Adapter to write into target file. Things were running smoothly for years, until recently, when the volume of data being written to the file reached large size of tens of megabytes. The operation took around half an hour to complete, causing timing problems where subsequent operations within the process had to wait, and third party system was not happy to wait so long.

I have found this one line command from the Terminal is the quickest way to backup my routines.

In the Namespace the routines reside:

w $SYSTEM.OBJ.Export("MYRTNS*.MAC","C:\Users\Username\Desktop\MYRTNS.BCK-9-2-2016-8AM")

NewBie's Corner Session 20 Parameters and Status Part I

Welcome to NewBie's Corner, a weekly or biweekly post covering basic Caché Material.

Parameters

Parameters are another name for Variables when used in passing data from one Routine to another.

Let us say we have 2 routines (RtnA and RtnB), and we want to pass 3 parameters (Parm1, Parm2, Parm3) from RtnA to RtnB.

RtnA would look like:

Following my previous post, some urged me to get to the point – ok, so I found my "star" journaling globals, the ones that take up the most space – but how do I avoid this? How do I minimize the journal's size?

[DISCLAIMER: Some might still be disappointed after this post as well but wait till the next one... ]

NewBie's Corner Session 18 Caché or Cache

Welcome to NewBie's Corner, a weekly or biweekly post covering basic Caché Material.

Caché and Cache

Caché and Cache are not the same. Caché is a product offered by InterSystems. Whereas Cache refers to memory storage.
In computing, a cache /ˈkæʃ/ KASH, is a hardware or software component that stores data so future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation, or the duplicate of data stored elsewhere.

Process-private Globals can be used as a data global in storage definition. That way, each process can have its own objects for the class with ppg storage. For example lets define a pool, which can:

• add elements to a pool (ignoring duplicates)
• check if an element exists in the pool

Here's the class:

NewBie's Corner Session 16 Introduction to New Concepts

Welcome to NewBie's Corner, a weekly or biweekly post covering basic Caché Material.

A number of new concepts are introduced in this session that will be developed more fully in subsequent sessions. It is necessary to at least introduce these concepts here because they are all interrelated.

Older style of MUMPS Programming

This is the fourth article in a series on iKnow demo applications, showcasing how the concepts and context provided through iKnow's unique bottom-up approach can be used to implement relevant use cases and help users be more productive in their daily tasks. Previous articles discussed the Knowledge Portal, the Set Analysis Demo and the Dictionary Builder Demo, each of which gradually implemented slightly more advanced interactions with what iKnow gleans from unstructured data.

This week, we'll look into one more demo application, the Rules Builder Demo, in which we'll build on previous work but again climb a step on the level ladder, implementing a more high-level use case than in the previous ones. The idea came from an opportunity where we were asked to help the customer in the finance sector make sense of vast volumes of contract data. They wanted to semi-automate the extraction of logical rules from that text (in fluent legalese!), so they could be fed into other systems. While this was an exciting use case to work on (and more on it in this GS2016 presentation), we've also used it in other cases, for example to extract mentions of ejection fraction from Electronic Health Records.

Date range queries going too slow for you? SQL Performance got you down? I have ANOTHER weird trick that SQL Developers don't want you to know!*

NewBie's Corner Session 15 Executing Routines and Labels

Welcome to NewBie's Corner, a weekly or biweekly post covering basic Caché Material.

Routines and Labels

Routines are computer programs with a number of executable code lines.

Labels (also called tags) are points in a routine that can be called (executed). They subdivide routines into manageable modules (or subroutines).

Routines, Subroutines/Modules and Functions

The release of IBM POWER 8 processors with AIX 7.1 introduced up to 8 SMT threads per processor core (logical or physical). Which SMT level (1, 2, 4, or 8) to use can be confusing and varies based on multiple factors. This article is meant to help with a starting point for your specific application.

Firstly, if running on a version of 2014.x or older, it is advised to use SMT 4 or lower. SMT 8 with those older versions of Cache' has shown a decline in performance and scaling in benchmarking applications.