#Caché

Until recently I didn't pay much attention to Portal's home page:

If it's not showing when you initially launch Portal you can easily jump to it using the button / tab at the top of the left-hand column of options. And later during your session, get there via the Home link that will be visible at the top of every page.

On the Home page the "Recent" section is automatically maintained for you.

Hi ObjectScript developers!

InterSystems ObjectScript is perhaps the best language on the planet to deal with globals - and it is an interpretable language.

Yes, it has a compiler. But even the compiler can compile some lines in ObjectScript which will then fire as bugs during the runtime.

There are some technics on how to avoid that such as unit testing, coding guidelines and your coding experience, of course ;)

Here I want to present to you the yet another approach to how you can reduce the number of errors in your ObjectScript runtime and enforce coding guidelines - it's an ObjectScript Quality tool developed by Lite Solutions, InterSystems solution partner.

See the details below.

NewBie's Corner Session 6 If and Kill commands

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

Click on the Caché Cube in your system tray and select Terminal to try out the commands.

As in other computer programming languages, the If command is the primary decision makes.

If command with numeric operands

The attached code package provides a simple implementation of a web service client that utilizes the USPS Shipping API to normalize an address.

This code requires the developer to obtain a USPS Shipping API user ID which can be obtained from the USPS shipping API website. The assigned User Id can either be passed into the web service call as a parameter or can be coded as a parameter into the Request object.

InterSystems FAQ rubric

This can be achieved by using the CSV() procedure of the %SQL.Util.Procedures class.
Below is an example of usage code. (Assuming that the file test.csv is in c:\temp.)

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!

(Possibly?) little-known fact: It's possible to use $ListBuild on the left hand side of the equals sign in a set command to extract multiple list values at once:

For example:

InterSystems FAQ rubric

When executing OS commands, use $ZF(-100).

Recently DigitalOcean introduced new plans for droplets, but as existing droplets stayed on the old plans I decided to use API to resize them automatically. After reading tutorial, I wrote partial client for DigitalOcean API, which I would like to share today.

NewBie's Corner Session 10 Routines and Studio

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

InterSystems Caché provides a GUI (Graphical User Interface) based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) called Caché Studio. Developers can use Studio to create and maintain applications.

InterSystems has a new IDE called Atelier but that is for later.

Every developer has made the mistake of accidentally leaving temporary debug code in place when they meant to remove it after debugging is complete. The great thing about writing in ObjectScript is that there is a way to make temporary code be truly temporary and automatically self-destruct! This can also be done in such a way that the code has no change of making it into your source control stream, which can be helpful as well.

InterSystems FAQ rubric

ObjectScript allows you to pass any number of arguments using arrays. Do it by adding ... after the argument name.

An example is as follows. In the example statement, the argument information is set in a global variable (a variable stored in the database) so that it can be easily checked after the method is executed.

InterSystems FAQ rubric

InterSystems technologies are renowned for their high performing databases, which support the systems and operations of many organisations. However a key ingredient to this success is the quality and maintainability of their code.

The quality of code can impact everything from speed and ease of fixing bugs and making enhancements, to the overall performance of your organization and your ability to get ahead in the marketplace.

By ensuring your code is maintainable, you can reduce approximately 75% of the systems life cycle costs*. This is why, at George James Software, the solutions we build are always straightforward and written in high quality code - because we know that this solid foundation can positively impact the rest of your organization.

With a maintainable system you're able to reduce your overall maintenance as any issues that occur are significantly faster to identify and fix. This means you're free to allocate that time and budget to enhancements, enabling you to get the most value out of your applications and ultimately better support your organization.

Keep an eye out for our next few posts about what a maintainable system looks like and the tools that can help you keep your code maintainable, in order to help you to reduce those maintenance costs.