Working in support, I usually get asked how many days I should keep journals. Should it be two days or after two backups? More? Less? Why two?

The correct answer (for most of the environments) is that you should keep the journals since the last validated Backup. I.e., until you don't check if a Backup is valid (restoring the file and checking with the Integrity utility), you can't be sure there is a good copy of your data and can't purge the journals safely.

Open Exchange app
13 7
2 816

Hi Developers!
Let me share with you some exercises from a workshop about developing interoperability components in Java using PEX (Production EXtension).

You will find slides and step by step exercises about:

  • Understanding simple PEX components coded in Java.
  • Making some changes on them.

All built using containers, so you don't need to build a local Java environment.

Open Exchange app
3 6
0 406
Article
· Feb 18, 2021 2m read
Basic JSON Compare

Hi Dev Community

I thought i would share a little method I knocked together to traverse and compare 2 JSON objects for basic equivilance. I'm currently working on some data migration, and wanted a basic sanity check to validate that the JSON output is basically equivliant between the old and new, excluding a few things like timestamps.

It's a basic little recurvsive method, that will bubble up any differences over a nested structure. It's very low tech, as that's all I need it to do, but I thought it might be useful for others?

4 6
1 872
Article
· Jun 12, 2021 2m read
Running reviews on Open Exchange

For several weeks I'm creating reviews on OEX.
So I'd like to explain to you the criteria that I apply to find my ratings.
Of course, each reviewer is an independent person and has his own criteria and his own opinion.
And that's good and important! As Winston Churchill once said:

"If 2 people always have the same opinion, then 1 of them is superfluous"

6 6
0 330

In this article I will demonstrate the following :

  • Update ReferencesRange(OBX:7) against ObservationIdentifier(OBX:3.1)[TestCode] from database by using custom utility function
  • Update Abnormal Flag(OBX:8) against ObservationIdentifier(OBX:3.1)[TestCode] and ObservationValue(OBX:5)[Result] from database utility function
  • Route Message based on Abnormal Flag(OBX:8)

Below is the primary and transformed HL7 2.5 ORU_R01 message:

Open Exchange app
1 6
0 896
Article
· Dec 3, 2021 1m read
VSCode-ObjectScript on GitHub

Not so while ago GitHub introduced, ability to very quickly run VSCode in the browser for any repository hosted there. Press the . key on any repository or pull request, or swap .com with .dev in the URL, to go directly to a VS Code environment in your browser.

github dev

This VSCode is a light version of the Desktop version but works entirely in Browser. And due to this, it has a limitation for extensions which was allowed to work this way. And let me introduce the new version 1.2.1 of VSCode-ObjectScript extension which now supports running in Browser mode.

22 6
3 1.2K

As you can see in my profile I teach at a university and I wanted to share my take on teaching IRIS (or Caché before it).

It’s been some time but I remember seeing a series of articles by @Yuri Marx earlier this year about the course “Developing with InterSystems Objects and SQL”. He actually gave a brief description of what’s done on Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 with comments from instructor @Joel Solon. And I thought to myself, it may be interesting to share my experience.

8 6
2 362
Article
· Jan 25, 2021 2m read
Static Documentation Generators

Hi Community,

In the past, technical documentation of the source code and software products was generated in chm, pdf files and documentation generators of the programming languages themselves. This old approach had the following limitations:
1. Outdated documentation;
2. Non-interactive and difficult to consult documentation;
3. Layout unresponsive, unfriendly and not adherent to HTML;
4. Inability to customize the layout of the documentation;
5. Inability to have HTML 5 documentation online and offline.
6. Lack of Markdown support.

Open Exchange app
1 5
0 635

Hi developers!

Recently we announced the preview of Embedded Python technology in InterSystems IRIS.

Check the Sneak Peak video by @Bob Kuszewski.

Embedded python gives the option to load and run python code in the InterSystems IRIS server. You can either use library modules from Python pip, like numpy, pandas, etc, or you can write your own python modules in the form of standalone py files.

So once you are happy with the development phase of the IRIS Embedded Python solution there is another very important question of how the solution could be deployed.

One of the options you can consider is using the ZPM Package manager which is described in this article.

Open Exchange app
3 5
0 968

In this article I will explain how to Authenticate, Authorize and Audit by code by using CSP Web Application along with Enabling /Disabling and Authenticate/Unauthenticate any Web Application.

Application Layout

Open Exchange app
8 5
2 1.4K
Article
· Mar 3, 2021 4m read
Access to IRIS from Rust

What do you think If I will say you, that very soon you will be able to connect to IRIS from the application written in Rust.

What is Rust

Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. Rust is syntactically similar to C++, but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker to validate references. Rust achieves memory safety without garbage collection, and reference counting is optional. (c) Wikipedia

Open Exchange app
6 5
2 672
Article
· Dec 20, 2021 1m read
Holiday Reading: What Lies Beneath!

For those of you who might be new to IRIS, and even those who have used Cache or IRIS for some time but want to explore beyond its usually-assumed boundaries and practices, you might want to dive into this detailed exploration of the database engine that is at its heart, and discover just what you can really do with it, going way beyond what InterSystems have done with it for you.

10 5
4 490

Hi developers!

Just want to share an old but always relevant best practice on namespaces changing @Dmitry Maslennikov shared with me (again).

Consider method:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

set ns=$namespace

zn "%SYS"

// try-catch in case there will be an error

try {

// do something, e.g. config change

}

catch {}

 zn ns    ; returning back to the namespace we came in the routine

return sc

}

And with new $namespace the method could be rewritten as:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

new $namespace

set $namespace="%SYS"

// do something

return sc

}

So! The difference is that we don't need to change the namespace manually as it will be back automatically once we return the method.

and we don't need try-catch (at least for this purpose) too.

4 5
0 740
Article
· Nov 28, 2021 3m read
Leveraging the Audit database

The InterSystems IRIS has a great audit system. It is responsible for auditing system events, but you can use it to audit your applications (great feature).

The audit system is based into event concept. The events can occur with IRIS or in an application. So, we have two type of events to the audit system:

1. System events: events occured into the InterSystems IRIS components (database, interoperability, analytics and core);

Open Exchange app
2 4
1 873
Article
· Oct 12, 2021 2m read
Generating OFX [V1]

Just in case you never heard about OFX before
V1 was an attempt to create a dedicated SGML for banking and ignoring XML. Details.
It evolved to XML but not for M$ MONEY. Today we would use JSON for similar tasks.

5 4
0 478

The pandemic that struck the world in 2020 made everyone follow the news and the numbers that involve the COVID-19.

Why don’t you take that opportunity to create something simple and pleasant, to follow the number of vaccinations worldwide?

To face this challenge, I'm using the data provided by Our World in Data - Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems.

They have a dedicated repository on Github with the data of COVID-19, and I took the vaccination data to help me with my tracker.

Open Exchange app
4 4
0 395

This is the second piece in our series on 2021.2 SQL enhancements delivering an adaptive, high-performance SQL experience. In this article, we'll zoom in on the innovations in gathering Table Statistics, which are of course the primary input for the Run Time Plan Choice capability we described in the previous article.

11 4
1 818

Introduction

InterSystems IRIS 2020.1 includes PEX (Production EXtension Framework) to facilitate the development of IRIS Interoperability productions with components written in Java or .NET.

Thanks to PEX, an integration developer with knowledge of Java or .NET can benefit from the power, scalability, and robustness of the InterSystems IRIS Interoperability framework and be productive in no time.

5 4
1 1.2K

Recently I wanted to get a list of all cached queries and their texts. Here's how to do that.

First create an SQL Procedure returning Cache Query text from a Cached Query routine name:

Class test.CQ
{

/// SELECT test.CQ_GetText()
ClassMethod GetText(routine As %String) As %String [ CodeMode = expression, SqlProc ]
{
##class(%SQLCatalog).GetCachedQueryInfo(routine)
}

}

And after that you can execute this query:

5 4
0 696

At the heart of IRIS and Cache is a very interesting database architecture that we, at M/Gateway Developments, refer to as "Global Storage". If you ever wanted to know more about the fundamentals and capabilities of this underlying database, you might want to read a major analysis we've put together:

https://github.com/robtweed/global_storage

Amongst other things you'll discover that:

8 4
2 605