Hello, InterSystems community!

Lately, you have probably heard of the new InterSystems Package Manager - ZPM. If you're familiar with it or with such package managers as NPM, Dep, pip/PyPI, etc. or just know what is it all about -- this question is for you! The question I want to arise is actually a system design question, or, in other words, "how should ZPM implement it".

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Hi Community,

Please read this when you have the time and keep an open mind. Also, you are welcome to tell me it is a terrible idea.

The main reason for this post

If you look at NPM, it has 1.3 million packages. Now ask yourself, is this an achievement or a nightmare?
How many of those packages are no longer supported?
How many of those packages break compatibility on version changes?
How do you know which one to use?

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Discussion
· Nov 9, 2022
Code Golf: Word Order

We're back with a code golf!

You will receive a string. Each word in the string will contain a number.
This number is the position that word should have in the sentence.
If the input string is empty, return an empty string.
The output can only be in words, without the given numbers.

Input

"i2s T1his Te4st a3"

Output

This is a Test

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Discussion
· Mar 19, 2019
Rule to validate SQL syntaxis

Hi! We have received a request to create a new rule on CachéQuality to identify when a developer uses double quotes (" ") within any SQL statement.

We have been asked many times about SQL validation rules, and we would like to open a debate to allow everyone discuss what would you like to be checked on a SQL statement.

Current examples are for basic situations:

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I usually receive complains from our customers about the BPL and DTL web pages automatic refreshes, it's a common problem among newbies users but for veteran developers too, they forget to save the changes regularly and automatically the web page is reloaded, losing all the work done.

Maybe an autosave would fix this problem that produces a deep feeling of hate and resentment against InterSystems technology among our customers. I've added an idea in our portal, so feel free to vote it!

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Discussion
· Apr 23, 2021
External Language Server in 2021.1

Now that IRIS 2021.1 is available as a preview version, I would like to demonstrate a "new" feature. The Java Gateway has been around for a while now but in 2021.1 it has new skills. External Language Servers are available for Java, DotNet, and Python. Here is a quick - very quick - demo of using the External Java Server. Please don't focus solely on what this demo is doing but rather on what is happening in this demo. First, I acquire a gateway connection oref. This gateway connection is connected to the External Java Server - one of the External Language Servers.

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Hello community! I'm working on an internal innovation effort at InterSystems considering our documentation/resources around upgrades. As part of this, I'd love to have your answers to any/all of the following questions, either via comment or (if you prefer your answers to be more private) direct message.

Thanks in advance!

What InterSystems products + versions are you running? ($zv is ideal.)

What makes you decide to upgrade?

What are your blockers to upgrading?

What is your process for evaluating and planning a possible upgrade?

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Discussion
· Oct 8, 2021
Code Golf: Just add water...

Have you ever seen those vaccum compressed towels, that look like a pill and after you add water became a towel?

That's our challenge for today. As usual shortest solution wins.

Task

You will receive an integer number and you will return a new number where each digit is repeated a number of times equals to its value.

Input:

42

Output:

444422

Note:

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Discussion
· Aug 16, 2022
[Off-Topic] Deep questions

Hello community,

First of all thanks for reading this post:

Because of you are more experienced, pragmatic, and have a lot of knowledge and good know-how; please consider to read and answer some question, if you would like:

Why did you choose to become a software engineer / developer?

How and when did you start to generate a "flow state of mind" during your career?

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Discussion
· Mar 2, 2023
Code Golf: Isogram

It's time for a Code Golf round!

Isogram

A word or phrase that has no repeating letters, consecutive or non-consecutive.


Implement a method that checks if the received string is an isogram or not.
Assume the empty string is an isogram.
Ignore the letter case.

Allowed inputs: A-Z, a-z.

As usual, the shortest solution wins!

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Hi Developers!

Thank you for using ZPM Package Manager and contributing more and more useful packages to the public registry!

But as you already aware ZPM packages are always deployed with source code.

Do you think we need to add the option to deploy without source code - e.g. if you want to deploy a commercial package?

Will you develop commercial modules if there will be an option and deploy it with ZPM?

How do you deploy commercial applications today?

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Hi guys!

Suppose you developed a tool, framework, library on InterSystems ObjectScript for InterSystems Data Platform, share it via Open Exchange and want people to install it.

What is the best strategy if it is a library and supposed to be called from different namespaces?

Here are the following thoughts:

1. Tool's developer should be able to use globals to read/store data the tool needs.

2. Tool's consumer should be confident, that the thing he/she installs will not harm the application's data.

3. A tool should be callable from any application's namespace.

4. Tool's installation(in general) should not request manual security changes (e.g. grant the write access to IRISLIB) and %YourClass is not an option.

5. It's easy to uninstall the tool - just delete the namespace/database (maybe delete some web-apps too).

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The goal is to construct a comma separated string, using a loop but the same way $listtostring(var,",") would do (i.e. "a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h" without starting or ending comma).

What is the best way to do it, concerning the readability of the code and its performances?

To do so, there are more than 5 methods, but in this example we will test 4 :

1) using a "if" in the loop

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Images for other languages are often build using multistage build process.

What about InterSystems IRIS?

Consider this Dockerfile:

FROM irishealth-community:2020.4.0.524.0 AS builder

# Load code into USER and compile
# Adjust settings, etc.

FROM irishealth-community:2020.4.0.524.0

# replace in standard kit with what we modified in first stage

COPY --from=builder /usr/irissys/iris.cpf /usr/irissys/.
COPY --from=builder /usr/irissys/mgr/IRIS.DAT /usr/irissys/mgr/.
COPY --from=builder /usr/irissys/mgr/user/IRIS.DAT /usr/irissys/mgr/user/.

The advantage of this approach is the image size.
The disadvantage is that on a final stage developer must know/remember all the modified places in the builder image.

But otherwise is this approach OK for InterSystems IRIS?
Have anyone tried to build IRIS images this way?

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Let's consider you would like to efficiently store your historical data in a similar structure than the one used for your current data, but without sharing the same physical storage (ie : not in the same global). What is the most efficient way to do it ?

Below a simple class of your current data :

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