Article
· Mar 4, 2016 1m read
Getting my head around a class model

There's plenty of goodness in the %-packages InterSystems supplies, and it seems that every new version of Caché brings something new. The browser-based class documentation (a.k.a. Documatic) generally provides a good level of information, but on the basis that "a picture is worth a thousand words" I sometimes want a diagram.

For example, when trying to navigate the %Dictionary package for a project that needed to find out about class definitions, here's one of the UML class diagrams I created.

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Article
· Mar 2, 2017 1m read
Trusting the code you import

As more people join Developer Community, and with increasing efforts to promote code sharing, I'd like to draw fresh attention to this post I wrote a year ago. It spotlights a feature within the class compiler which is both useful and dangerous. When importing code (e.g. from an XML export of classes received from someone), it's worth considering the risks.

Even if that post doesn't seem relevant to you at the moment you may wish to note it for the future. A handy way of doing this is to click the star icon at the end of it.

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Article
· Feb 24, 2017 1m read
Collision for SHA-1 hash algorithm

The recent announcement of a collision for the SHA-1 hash algorithm has caused some consternation:

https://shattered.io/

Here is some background to help put this in perspective.

Cryptographic hash functions can have a variety of properties. The property at issue here is:

"Collision resistance - it is computationally infeasible to find any two distinct inputs x, x' which hash to the same output, i.e., such that h(x) = h(x')."

(Menezes, van Oorchot, and Vanstone, "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", section 9.2.2)

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Article
· Feb 14, 2017 1m read
Portal tip: The inconspicuous Menu button

Amongst the large fonts and chunky icons of Portal's pages, the Menu button in the top left corner is easily overlooked:

When clicked, it often produces the following menu:

When I remember it's there, I find the "View Console Log" option particularly handy.

I wrote "often" above because I've also noticed that the Menu contents change when I'm on a page within the Ensemble section of Portal:

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Article
· Feb 14, 2017 1m read
Portal tip: Feel at home on the Home page

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.

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In last week's discussion we created a simple graph based on the data input from one file. Now, as we all know, sometimes we have multiple different datafiles to parse and correlate. So this week we are going to load additional perfmon data and learn how to plot that into the same graph.
Since we might want to use our generated graphs in reports or on a webpage, we'll also look into ways to export the generated graphs.

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This is the second part of my long post about package managers in operating systems and language distributions. Now, hopefully, we have managed to convince you that convenient package manager and rich 3rd party code repository is one key factor in establishing of a vibrant and fast growing ecosystem. (Another possible reason for ecosystem success is the consistent language design, but it will be topic for another day.)
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Points to remember before you start:

  1. It is not possible in a COS (Caché Object Script) job/process context to have multiple Named Pipes. It is a one Named Pipe per job/process limited line of communication.
  1. Named Pipes, in Caché, like most pipes on most operating systems are Unidirectional. That means you open them for either Read or Write, but not both.
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The class %Compiler.UDL.TextServices arrived in 2015.1, bringing us methods for exporting a class in UDL format (i.e. looking just like we're used to seeing it in Studio), and importing a UDL format definition back into a namespace. Some source control tools including our Deltanji are now able to use UDL format, resulting in diffs that are easier to understand.

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Imagine that your .NET project uses the Caché DBMS and you need a fully-functional and reliable authorization system. Writing such a system from scratch would not make much sense, and you will clearly want to use something that already exists in .NET, e.g. ASP.NET Identity. By default, however, this framework supports only its native DBMS – MS SQL. Our task was to create an adaptor that would let us quickly and easily port Identity to the InterSystems Caché DBMS. This work resulted in creation of the ASP.NET Identity Caché Provider.

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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.

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Article
· Jan 16, 2017 15m read
Part I – Thoughts about package manager

Have you ever thought what could be a reason why some development environment (database, language) would eventually become popular? What part of this popularity could be explain as language quality? What by new and idioms approaches introduced by early language adopters? What is due to healthy ecosystem collaboration? What is due to some marketing genius?

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So I know it's been a while, and I hate to let my adoring fans down... just not enough to actually start writing again. But the wait is over and I'm back! Now bask in my beautiful ginger words!

For this series, I am going to look at some common problems we see in the WRC and discuss some common solutions. Of course, even if you find a solution here, you are always welcome to call in and expression you gratitude, or just hear my voice!

This week's common problem: "My query returns no data."

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Article
· Jan 6, 2017 4m read
Atelier, The XML Contents Editor

This article is one of the series which introduces Eclipse to experienced Caché/ Ensemble/ HealthShare users. The goal is to open the perspective of a developer who was using Caché Studio for years and make Her/ Him see deeply into the Eclipse world – far beyond Atelier. In other words it is an Atelier (Eclipse IDE for InterSystems technology) beginner’s guide. This time the topic is: editing XML files using Atelier.

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Article
· Feb 17, 2016 3m read
Listing files in folder

Question:

How do I get a list of files residing in a certain folder/directory, according to some wildcard/filter.

For example all '*.txt' files in 'C:\Temp'.

Answer:

In CACHE –

You can use the %Library.File's FileSet class query.

Here's some sample code using it (also attached):

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Article
· Dec 20, 2016 5m read
Atelier, The Productivity Boost Tool

Development productivity? Isn’t it kind of an oxymoron? Anyhow, we all dream a magic tool which does the tedious job of the software development and leave the intuitive or creative part on the developer. Atelier is the next generation tool of InterSystems aiming to boost the productivity of Caché/ Ensemble based software development. Atelier is based on the popular Eclipse IDE platform, which makes available the “infinite” pool of third party tools for Caché developers. Those tools can truly boost the productivity. This short article gives some examples how third party plug-ins can help developing for Caché. It is an absolute beginner’s guide, beginner to Eclipse but experienced to Caché.

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Ansible helped me solve the problem of quickly deploying Caché and application components for Data Platforms benchmarks. You can use the same tools and methodology for standing up your test labs, training systems, development or other environments. If you deploy applications at customer sites you could automate much of the deployment and ensure that system, Caché and your application are configured to your applications best practice standards.

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I have posted to aid others in diagnosing problem with SSL/TLS connections to superserver port from .NET client executable.

The cache instance this appeared on is quite old - 2011 - so I do not know if Intersystems have added a better error message in a later version

The actual fault was due to the certificate in the %SuperServer SSL/TLS configuration having expired.

The unhelpful message that appeared in the .NET client included the following partial stack trace.

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Those of you who keep an eye on developments in the mainstream of IT will be aware that a major upheaval has been occurring over the last 5 or so years, in which JavaScript has exploded in popularity and importance. Largely as a result of its server-side incarnation - Node.js - it has broken free of just being the scripting language that you use in web browser, to becoming the world's most popular language and enterprise technology of choice.

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One of the great availability and scaling features of Caché is Enterprise Cache Protocol (ECP). With consideration during application development distributed processing using ECP allows a scale out architecture for Caché applications. Application processing can scale to very high rates from a single application server to the processing power of up to 255 application servers with no application changes.

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Article
· Dec 7, 2016 3m read
Enable CORS for CSP/ ZEN Applications

As web application gets more complex, more technologies are involved into the application development. Once it gets deployed in large scale the configuration gets more complex too. For sure one of the most difficult part of the story is the security. In a complex solution when independent servers are feeding single web pages with contents, it is indeed challenging to keep the integrity of such system. HTML5 introduced a (weak) security constraint, the Cross Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). This article tells how to enable CORS for CSP/ ZEN applications.

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Enterprises need to grow and manage their global computing infrastructures rapidly and efficiently while simultaneously optimizing and managing capital costs and expenses. Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) computing and storage services meet the needs of the most demanding Caché based application by providing
 a highly robust global computing infrastructure.

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