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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Greetings! This article describes yet another simple way of creating installers for the solutions based on InterSystems Caché. The topic covers applications, which can be installed or completely removed from Caché with one action only. If you are still documenting installation instructions that have more than one step to do to install your application — it’s high time you automated this process.

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If I have defined a class query in one of my classes and I want to use that query from a method of another class, what are the pros and cons of using the %SQL.Statement interface versus the %Library.ResultSet interface?

I believe %SQL.Statement is the newer interface.

So if the old way is:

USER>s rs=##class(%Library.ResultSet).%New("%Library.File:FileSet")
 
USER>s sc=rs.Execute("c:\s\","*.txt")
 
USER>w sc
1
USER>while rs.%Next() {w !,rs.Data("Name")}

...

then the new way is:

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Article
· Dec 22, 2016 2m read
The Polymetric Dashboard

> Customizable System Monitoring. ## Introduction The Polymetric Dashboard is a stand-alone module that provides enhanced monitoring tools for a Caché environment. Equipped with over one hundred sensors that monitor key system metrics, a robust REST API, and a modular AngularJS user interface, the Polymetric Dashboard is fully functional out of the box. However, the Polymetric Dashboard is designed to be customizable; any system metric can be monitored by creating a new sensor, and the visualization of collected data can be tailored to specific requirements and purposes.

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Article
· May 26, 2016 1m read
Windows, Caché and virus scanners

I have seen a customer problem recently where the use of a virus scanner running over Caché databases was causing intermittent application slow downs and bad user response times.

This is a surprisingly common problem, so this short post is just a reminder to exclude key Caché components from your virus scanning.

Generally virus scanning must exclude the CACHE.DAT database files and Caché binaries. If an anti-virus is scanning CACHE.DATs and InterSystems files then system performance will be significantly impacted.

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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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Whether you are accessing DeepSee for the first time ever or you are configuring DeepSee on a new instance, there are two common issues that are encountered after clicking on the “DeepSee” option in the System Management Portal.

Issue #1: Architect/Analyzer is grayed out!

Issue #2: DeepSee must be enabled before use.

Issue #1: Architect/Analyzer is grayed out!

There are two common causes for this problem.

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Importance and Collection of Exact Version Information ($zv / $zversion)
The explanation of:
- why collecting $zv is important (The WHY),
- what the components of $zv mean (The WHAT),
- and how to collect $zv (The HOW).
(The Ultimate $zv Guide to the ISC Galaxy in large, friendly letters)
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Article
· Mar 3, 2016 2m read
Class Projections and Projection Classes

The purpose of this post is to raise the profile of a powerful mechanism that has long been available to us, and to open a discussion about ways in which it can be used or abused.

You can read more detail about the mechanism here. To summarize, your class definition can use the Projection keyword to reference one or more projection classes. A projection class can implement methods that get invoked at key points in the lifecycle of your class.

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Article
· Jul 4, 2016 8m read
Introduction to the iKnow REST APIs

After a five-part series on sample iKnow applications (parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), let's turn to a new feature coming up in 2017.1: the iKnow REST APIs, allowing you to develop rich web and mobile applications. Where iKnow's core COS APIs already had 1:1 projections in SQL and SOAP, we're now making them available through a RESTful service as well, in which we're trying to offer more functionality and richer results with fewer buttons and less method calls. This article will take you through the API in detail, explaining the basic principles we used when defining them and exploring the most important ones to get started.

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Article
· Dec 12, 2016 3m read
Generate and Validate Captcha Code

Suppose you have developed your own web app with InterSystems technologies stack and now want to perform a captcha validation on the client side in order to determine whether or not the user is human and make it safer. There are some modern frameworks to address the captcha issue, however most part of them needs internet access to generate codes and sometimes are complex to implement. Take this as basic example considering that image recognition has gotten too good. That's why you nowadays you tend to see more pattern recognition captchas than mere reading ones. (I.e.

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Article
· Nov 1, 2016 9m read
Reflection in Caché

The topic of reflection hasn't been raised in Caché forums or blogs too often. Perhaps, it happened because the notion of reflection is not explicitly defined in Caché. However, it exists in Caché and can be a very useful development tool.

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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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In this posting I want to raise the profile of a feature that arrived in 2009.1 but is perhaps not very well known.

It is sometimes useful to make certain packages, globals or routines available to all of your namespaces. Of course you can add the necessary mappings whenever you create a new namespace, but here's a simpler way.

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I wanted to share a little tidbit which is in the Studio documentation (http://docs.intersystems.com/cache20152/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?...) but many people who have been using the InterSystems Studio for a long time missed the addition of this *very* useful feature, and every time I mention this to an audience I see at least one face light up because of how excited they are to learn about it!

Within Studio, the Output pane (View -> Output) is actually misnamed. It is actually an Input/Output window which can be used to run Caché ObjectScript commands!

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Article
· Jun 6, 2016 7m read
Language Extensions

This is a posting about a particular feature of Caché which I find useful but is probably not well known or used. I am referring to the feature of Language Extensions.

This feature allows you to extend the commands, special variables and functions available in Caché Object Script with commands, special variables and functions of your own. This functionality also applies to other languages the Caché supports at the server, including Caché Basic and Multivalue Basic.


Why would I need or want to add new commands ?

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In this article I'll describe how to set up web services and/or REST services using EWD 3.

Since EWD 3 is designed to be modular, you can construct the environment that exactly meets your needs, but for much of the time you'll probably find that the pre-built EWD 3 ewd-xpress super-module does most of what you need because it hooks together all the core EWD 3 and other building-blocks you'll need:

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The MONITOR process (also called the Caché Monitor) scans the messages in your cconsole.log file and sends you emails based on the severity of those messages. The MONITOR is configured using the ^MONMGR utility in terminal.

The MONITOR should not be confused with the similarly named System Monitor, which checks a variety of system health and performance metrics and can log messages regarding them to the cconsole.log, where they can then be scanned by the MONITOR.

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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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RESTful API Call From Cache to Particle.io Electron

Tom Fitzgibbon | Multidata | 212-967-6700 x537 | tom@mul.com

Summary: Simple Blink Tutorial for Particle.io Electron Device from Cache

Electron device is a tiny ARM processor ($40-$60) that connects to Particle’s world wide leased 2G/3G network (about $3/mo) and runs off an included LiPo battery. Using Cache’s %Net.HttpRequest you can send/receive data, control hardware and read sensors.

Step by Step (about 1 hour)

1) Get the Electron from store.particle.io.

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