Article
· May 30, 2019 2m read
BackgroundJobs over ECP

Running a Background Job using the JOB command is a well-known feature.
Using ECP to distribute databases to several servers is also well-known.
But using the combination of both to run a process on a different server
seems to be a rare case.

Sure there are enough other ways to start a remote job, but the special
combination with ECP where the application server starts a process on a
data server without additional networking is worth to be remembered.

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Article
· May 29, 2019 1m read
Simple Remote Server Control

This example is extracted from a long-running installation.
The purpose is to have simple monitoring of several servers at a rather primitive level.
Just slightly more intelligent than a raw PING. But still easy to integrate.
It avoids the overkill of information you are often confronted with while you are just
interested in the number of active processes or similar basic figures.
The example shows a basic skeleton that might be easily filled by your real needs.

It consists of 3 sections:

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PHP, from the beginning of its time, is renowned (and criticized) for supporting integration with a lot of libraries, as well as with almost all the DB existing on the market. However, for some mysterious reasons, it did not support hierarchical databases on the globals.

Globals are structures for storing hierarchical information. They are somewhat similar to key-value database with the only difference being that the key can be multi-level:

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Here is an ObjectScript snippet which lets to create database, namespace and a web application for InterSystems IRIS:

    set currentNS = $namespace

    zn "%SYS"

    write "Create DB ...",!
    set dbName="testDB"
    set dbProperties("Directory") = "/InterSystems/IRIS/mgr/testDB"
    set status=##Class(Config.Databases).Create(dbName,.dbProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "DB """_dbName_""" was created!",!!


    write "Create namespace ...",!
    set nsName="testNS"
    //DB for globals
    set nsProperties("Globals") = dbName
    //DB for routines
    set nsProperties("Routines") = dbName
    set status=##Class(Config.Namespaces).Create(nsName,.nsProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "Namespace """_nsName_""" was created!",!!


    write "Create web application ...",!
    set webName = "/csp/testApplication"
    set webProperties("NameSpace") = nsName
    set webProperties("Enabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("IsNameSpaceDefault") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("CSPZENEnabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("DeepSeeEnabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("AutheEnabled") = $$$AutheCache
    set status = ##class(Security.Applications).Create(webName, .webProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "Web application """webName""" was created!",!

    zn currentNS

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The last time that I created a playground for experimenting with machine learning using Apache Spark and an InterSystems data platform, see Machine Learning with Spark and Caché, I installed and configured everything directly on my laptop: Caché, Python, Apache Spark, Java, some Hadoop libraries, to name a few. It required some effort, but eventually it worked.

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The %Net.SSH.Session class lets you connect to servers using SSH. It's most commonly used with SFTP, especially in the FTP inbound and outbound adaptors.

In this article, I'm going to give a quick example of how to connect to an SSH server using the class, describe your options for authenticating, and how to debug when things go wrong.

Here's an example of making the connection:

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Hi guys!

Portrait of Madame X, Gustave Caillebotte.

One of the features I like in InterSystems ObjectScript is how you can process array transformations in a specific method or a function.

Usually when we say "process an array" we assume a very straightforward algorithm which loops through an array and does something with its entries upon a certain rule.

The trick is how you transfer an array to work with into a function.

One of the nice approaches on how to pass the information about an array is using $Name and Indirection operator.

Below you can find a very simple example which illustrates the thing.

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1. Purpose

This is a 10-minute simple step-by-step guide on how to quickly set up various flavors of HealthShare docker containers from scratch on a Win10 laptop.

For example, we can build a couple of HealthShare "global edition vs UK Edition" demos as shown below.

There are a couple of frequently asked questions from HealthShare colleagues and partners:

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Article
· Apr 9, 2019 3m read
IRIS/Ensemble as an ETL

IRIS and Ensemble are designed to act as an ESB/EAI. This mean they are build to process lots of small messages.

But some times, in real life we have to use them as ETL. The down side is not that they can't do so, but it can take a long time to process millions of row at once.

To improve performance, I have created a new SQLOutboundAdaptor who only works with JDBC.

BatchSqlOutboundAdapter

Extend EnsLib.SQL.OutboundAdapter to add batch batch and fetch support on JDBC connection.

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Article
· Apr 8, 2019 4m read
Should we use computers?

The titular question was quite relevant and often discussed some thirty years ago. The thought went: “Sure, there are industries where computers are the norm, but in my industry we got just fine so far, the benefits are questionable, problems innumerable and unsolved. Can we continue as before or should we embrace this new technology?”

Today, everyone asks the same question but about Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The doubts are the same – lack of expertise, lack of known path, perceived irrelevancy to the industry.

Yet, as before, the correct, even the only possible answer is a resounding yes. Read on to find out why.

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Article
· Apr 1, 2019 3m read
Closures in ObjectScript

After many sleepless nights it's a pleasure to announce the newer, better, moderner ObjectScript compiler which implemented pretty much everything you ever wanted to have in modern ObjectScript:

  • Design objective of this new compiler is to parse reasonable subset of current ObjectScript syntax which will look readable for stranger, and not scare them with 1 letter syntax. The good start for compiler was the old-good COS Guidelines from here https://github.com/intersystems-ru/cos-guidelines
  • For reasons we mentioned above we do not parse 1 letter syntax. It's declared evil;
  • We do not handle dotted syntax for the same reason - modern syntax with {} is proper replacement for dotted syntax blocks;

But we not only parse the modern ObjectScript syntax, we have implemented finally the long-standing request which we always dreamed about. Closures!

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Article
· Mar 31, 2019 20m read
How to write the home address right?

How Tax Service, OpenStreetMap, and InterSystems IRIS
could help developers get clean addresses

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Paying the Tax (The Tax Collector), 1640

In my previous article, we just skimmed the surface of objects. Let's continue our reconnaissance. Today's topic is a tough one. It's not quite BIG DATA, but it's still the data not easy to work with: we're talking about fairly large amounts of data. It won't all fit into RAM at once, and some of it won't even fit on the drive (not due to lack of space, but because there's a lot of junk). The name of our subject is FIAS DB: the Federal Information Address System database - the databases of addresses in Russia. The archive is 5.5 GB. And it's a compressed XML file. After extraction, it will be a full 53 GB (set aside 110 GB for extraction). And when you start to parse and convert it, that 110 GB won't be enough. There won't be enough RAM either.

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Hello

I made for fun a bash script that creates csv files from a %GOGEN exported file.
%GOGEN, the utility for exporting globals for Cache 5.xx

First I thought it would be very simply with bash, but ...
- if I want a header in the csv file
- if you export with GOGEN more globals together not only one
- if I want a csv file for every global/indexes has the global ..

The simply bash script goes up 100 lines of code. If I will start again with this, I would use Python or Go, not bash.

Example:

For a EXPORTED.GLO file

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Article
· Mar 28, 2019 2m read
ObjectScript error handling snippets

ObjectScript has at least three ways of handling errors (status codes, exceptions, SQLCODE, etc.). Most of the system code uses statuses but exceptions are easier to handle for a number of reasons. Working with legacy code you spend some time translating between the different techniques. I use these snippets a lot for reference. Hopefully they're useful to others as well.

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This is a continuation of my story about the development of my project isc-tar started in the first part.

Just having tests is not enough, it does not mean that you will run tests after all changes. Running tests should be automated, and when you cover all your functionality with tests, everything should work well after any change in any place. And Continuous Integration (CI) helps to keep the code and deployment procedure with as fewer bugs as possible and automates the routine procedures, like publishing releases.

I use GitHub to store the source code. And some time ago GitHub started to work on its own CI/CD platform and named it GitHub Actions. It is not widely available, yet. You have to be signed as a beta tester for this feature, as I did. GitHub Actions uses quite a different way how to deal with a build workflow. What is important that Github Actions allows to use Docker, and it’s quite easy to customize available actions. And interesting that GitHub Actions is really much bigger than any classic CI like we have in Travis, Circle or Gitlab CI and so on. You can find more in the official documentation.

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Article
· Mar 19, 2019 9m read
A Tutorial On WebSockets

Intro

Most server-client communication on the web is based on a request and response structure. The client sends a request to the server and the server responds to this request. The WebSocket protocol provides a two-way channel of communication between a server and client, allowing servers to send messages to clients without first receiving a request. For more information on the WebSocket protocol and its implementation in InterSystems IRIS, see the links below.

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I am just recently announced my project isc-tar. But sometimes it is not less interesting what’s behind the scene: how it was built, how it works and what happens around the project. Here is the story:

  • How to develop this project
  • How to test it
  • How to release new versions for publishing
  • And finally how to automate all above
  • Continuous integration

So, I would like to tell all about it.

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Article
· Mar 15, 2019 2m read
Tar compress tool in ObjectScript

I'm sure most of you have already familiar with the possibility of using GZIP in InterSystems products. But, the problem is that GZIP working only with one file or stream, and it does not support folders. When you work in Unix systems, there is a possibility how to solve it, using tar compress tool which goes with every Linux system from out of the box. But what to do if you have work on Windows as well, which does not have it.

I am pleased to offer you my new project isc-tar, which will help you do not care about operating system, and deal with tar files anywhere.

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Keywords: Jupyter Notebook, Tensorflow GPU, Keras, Deep Learning, MLP, and HealthShare

1. Purpose and Objectives

In previous"Part I" we have set up a deep learning demo environment. In this "Part II" we will test what we could do with it.

Many people at my age had started with the classic MLP (Multi-Layer Perceptron) model. It is intuitive hence conceptually easier to start with.

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Hi Community!

I think everyone keeps the source code of the project in the repository nowadays: Github, GitLab, bitbucket, etc. Same for InterSystems IRIS projects check any on Open Exchange.

What do we do every time when start or continue working with a certain repository with InterSystems Data Platform?

We need a local InterSystems IRIS machine, have the environment for the project set up and the source code imported.

So every developer performs the following:

  1. Check out the code from repo
  2. Install/Run local IRIS installation
  3. Create a new namespace/database for a project
  4. Import the code into this new namespace
  5. Setup all the rest environment
  6. Start/continue coding the project

If you dockerize your repository this steps line could be shortened to this 3 steps:

  1. Check out the code from repo
  2. Run docker-compose build
  3. Start/continue coding the project

Profit - no any hands-on for 3-4-5 steps which could take minutes and bring head ache sometime.

You can dockerize (almost) any your InterSystems repo with a few following steps. Let’s go!

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Keywords: Anaconda, Jupyter Notebook, Tensorflow GPU, Deep Learning, Python 3 and HealthShare

1. Purpose and Objectives

This "Part I" is a quick record on how to set up a "simple" but popular deep learning demo environment step-by-step with a Python 3 binding to a HealthShare 2017.2.1 instance . I used a Win10 laptop at hand, but the approach works the same on MacOS and Linux.

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