Some readers of my previous article, Caché eXTreme for .NET - direct access to globals from C#, wondered if you could access information not just from the same instance in which you’re working, but also from another instance on the same computer, or from an instance located on another computer in the same local network. Some theorized, correctly, that this would be possible using the Enterprise Cache Protocol (ECP). In this article I’m going to show how it can be done.

Have you ever needed a math function but could not find what you needed and ended up writing your own? Look no further! ObjectScript-Math is here to solve all your math related function needs.

ObjectScript-Math is an Open Source library for ObjectScript Math functions. It is now available on Open Exchange. This library contains a mix of new functions that are not currently available and functions that are available. The existing functions will be wrapped for use from ObjectScript-Math so that all Math functions can have a central location.

This library will continue to grow, so give it a try and give your feedback!

Don't see what you are looking for? Please feel free to submit requests for additional functions or contribute code yourself!

What is %SQLRESTRICT

%SQLRESTRICT is a special %FILTER clause for use in MDX queries in InterSystems IRIS Business Intelligence. Since this function begins with %, it means this is a special MDX extension created by InterSystems. It allows users to insert an SQL statement that will be used to restrict the returned records in the MDX Result Set. This SQL statement must return a set of Source Record IDs to limit the results by. Please see the documentation for more information.

Why is this useful?

This is useful because there are often times users want to restrict the results in their MDX Result Set based on information that is not in their cubes. It may be the case that this information may not make sense to be in the cube. Other times this can be useful when there is a large set of values you want to restrict. As mentioned before, this is not a standard MDX function, it was created by InterSystems to handle cases were queries were not performing well or cases that were not easily solved by existing functions.

In the previous part of this series, we saw how to reference a web page that will enhance our dashboard experience. Now we will look into referencing data that is already in our cubes.

In this example, we will be referencing the controller object and we will be extracting data from it. This data will then be displayed as text in our Dashboard. In Part 5, we will show how to incorporate this data into other charting libraries.

Last time we deployed a simple IRIS application to the Google Cloud. Now we’re going to deploy the same project to Amazon Web Services using its Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

We assume you’ve already forked the IRIS project to your own private repository. It’s called <username>/my-objectscript-rest-docker-template in this article. <root_repo_dir> is its root directory.

Before getting started, install the AWS command-line interface and, for Kubernetes cluster creation, eksctl, a simple CLI utility. For AWS you can try to use aws2, but you’ll need to set aws2 usage in kube config file as described here.

I've been having a blast with the Advent of Code puzzles this year - though I'll be heading into a busy span of time with family soon and will probably drop off toward the end. (At least, that's what always seems to happen - it's a good thing, though!)

What is a portlet?

The simple answer is: a custom widget. A portlet can exist by itself on a DeepSee dashboard, it can be used along side standard DeepSee widgets, or along side other portlets. The rendering of the custom widget is completely user defined. This means you can embed a web page, create a form to perform any sort of action needed based on the data on your dashboard, use third party charting libraries, or simply display data from outside of a DeepSee cube.

How to get started

A demo in traditional style COS

This was written based on a previous trial in .XLS
It is far from being perfect. Rather a challenge for
improvement in all directions (code, interface, ...)
So anyone feel invited to make it better.

%objlasterror is a useful reference to the last error.

Every time $$$ERROR is called, %objlasterror is set to a result of this call.

It's important in cases where you want to convert exception to status:

Try {
   //  quality code
} Catch ex {
   Set sc = $g(%objlasterror, $$$OK)
   Set sc = $$$ADDSC(sc, ex.AsStatus())
}

Because AsStatus calls $$$ERROR under the wraps, the order is important, first you need to get %objlasterror and convert exception after that.

One of the most useful features in Studio is code snippets.

Here's how to add snippets to VSCode.

Here's a generalized instructions.

1. Go to File - Preferences - User Snippets and choose objectscript.

2. Add your snippet, here's an example:

When designing a hierarchy in DeepSee, a child member must have only one parent member. In the case where a child corresponds to two parents, the results can become unreliable. In the case where two similar members exist, their keys must be changed so that they are unique. We will take a look at two examples to see when this happens and how to prevent it.

This quick guide shows how to serve HTTPS requests with InterSystems API Management. Advantage here is that you have your certs on one separated server and you don't need to configure each backend web-server separately.

Here's how:

1. Buy the domain name.

2. Adjust DNS records from your domain to the IAM IP address.

3. Generate HTTPS certificate and private key. I use Let's Encrypt - it's free.

4. Start IAM if you didn't already.

5. Send this request to IAM:

Some time ago I developed an application that tackled a familarial problem faced by many developers when required to update multiple UAT or PRODUCTION sites with the latest Software patches that have been developed and tested on your DEV server and now need to be deployed to multiple sites running that software.

In principle the solution works as follows:

1) Prepare an XML export of affected classes/routines/csp pages/hl7 definitions et al

2) Optionally create a global export of any new globals or changes to existing globals

In this article, I would like to talk about the spec-first approach to REST API development.

While traditional code-first REST API development goes like this:

• Writing code
• REST-enabling it
• Documenting it (as a REST API)

Spec-first follows the same steps but reverse. We start with a spec, also doubling as documentation, generate a boilerplate REST app from that and finally write some business logic.

This is advantageous because:

• You always have relevant and useful documentation for external or frontend developers who want to use your REST API
• Specification created in OAS (Swagger) can be imported into a variety of tools allowing editing, client generation, API Management, Unit Testing and automation or simplification of many other tasks
• Improved API architecture. In code-first approach, API is developed method by method so a developer can easily lose track of the overall API architecture, however with the spec-first developer is forced to interact with an API from the position if API consumer which usually helps with designing cleaner API architecture
• Faster development - as all boilerplate code is automatically generated you won't have to write it, all that's left is developing business logic.
• Faster feedback loops - consumers can get a view of the API immediately and they can easier offer suggestions simply by modifying the spec

Let's develop our API in a spec-first approach!