#Containerization

The last time that I created a playground for experimenting with machine learning using Apache Spark and an InterSystems data platform, see Machine Learning with Spark and Caché, I installed and configured everything directly on my laptop: Caché, Python, Apache Spark, Java, some Hadoop libraries, to name a few. It required some effort, but eventually it worked.

Hi Community!

I think everyone keeps the source code of the project in the repository nowadays: Github, GitLab, bitbucket, etc. Same for InterSystems IRIS projects check any on Open Exchange.

What do we do every time when start or continue working with a certain repository with InterSystems Data Platform?

We need a local InterSystems IRIS machine, have the environment for the project set up and the source code imported.

So every developer performs the following:

1. Check out the code from repo
2. Install/Run local IRIS installation
3. Create a new namespace/database for a project
4. Import the code into this new namespace
5. Setup all the rest environment
6. Start/continue coding the project

If you dockerize your repository this steps line could be shortened to this 3 steps:

1. Check out the code from repo
2. Run docker-compose build
3. Start/continue coding the project

Profit - no any hands-on for 3-4-5 steps which could take minutes and bring head ache sometime.

You can dockerize (almost) any your InterSystems repo with a few following steps. Let’s go!

In this series of articles, I'd like to present and discuss several possible approaches toward software development with InterSystems technologies and GitLab. I will cover such topics as:

• Git 101
• Git flow (development process)
• GitLab installation
• GitLab Workflow
• Continuous Delivery
• GitLab installation and configuration
• GitLab CI/CD

In the previous article, we covered Git basics, why a high-level understanding of Git concepts is important for modern software development, and how Git can be used to develop software. Still, our focus was on the implementation part of software development, but this part presents:

• GitLab Workflow - a complete software life cycle process - from idea to user feedback
• Continuous Delivery - software engineering approach in which teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time. It aims at building, testing, and releasing software faster and more frequently.

If you look at the values.yaml of the IKO's Helm chart you'll find:

useIrisFsGroup: false 

Let's break down what it is and in what situations you may want to set it to true.

FsGroup refers to the file system group.

All source code to the article is available at: https://github.com/antonum/ha-iris-k8s

A few weeks ago I posted an announcement about a JavaScript-based interface for our mg_web WebServer interfacing addon module. mg_web isn't just restricted to use by JavaScript developers though. Many readers will be ObjectScript developers who are more used to using CSP as their web gateway. Some may even have much older legacy WebLink-based applications (and be wondering how to support them given that IRIS does not support WebLink).

Hey Community,

Learn about the changes we've made to InterSystems IRIS Containers, including security updates and the new web gateway container:

⏯ InterSystems IRIS Container Updates

https://www.youtube.com/embed/u5ccd1kifwQ
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Last time we launched an IRIS application in the Google Cloud using its GKE service.

And, although creating a cluster manually (or through gcloud) is easy, the modern Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach advises that the description of the Kubernetes cluster should be stored in the repository as code as well. How to write this code is determined by the tool that’s used for IaC.

In the case of Google Cloud, there are several options, among them Deployment Manager and Terraform. Opinions are divided as to which is better: if you want to learn more, read this Reddit thread Opinions on Terraform vs. Deployment Manager? and the Medium article Comparing GCP Deployment Manager and Terraform.

Preview releases are now available for the 2019.3 version of InterSystems IRIS and IRIS for Health!

Container images are available via the WRC's preview download site.

The version number for these releases is 2019.3.0.302.0

Public announcements will be made shortly, with separate announcements for each product.

InterSystems IRIS Data Platform 2019.3 is a CD (continuous delivery) release of InterSystems IRIS. It has many new capabilities including:

Continuous Delivery Releases of InterSystems IRIS

InterSystems API Manager

Node-level Architecture for Sharding and SQL Support

Infrastructure and Cloud Deployment Improvements

Port Authority for Monitoring Port Usage in Interoperability Productions

X12 Element Validation in Interoperability Productions

New Framework for Coding Business Hosts in Java

Java and .NET Gateway Reentrancy

In case you're planning on deploying IRIS For Health, or any of our containerized products, via the IKO on OpenShift, I wanted to share some of the hurdles we had to overcome.

As with any IKO based installation, we first need to deploy the IKO itself. However we were getting this error:

In this series of articles, I'd like to present and discuss several possible approaches toward software development with InterSystems technologies and GitLab. I will cover such topics as:

• Git 101
• Git flow (development process)
• GitLab installation
• GitLab Workflow
• Continuous Delivery
• GitLab installation and configuration
• GitLab CI/CD
• Why containers?
• Containers infrastructure
• CD using containers
• CD using ICM
• Container architecture

In this article, we would talk about building your own container and deploying it.

Hi Community,

Please welcome the new video recorded by @Evgeny Shvarov on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯ Developing InterSystems IRIS solution using GitHub Codespaces

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kklh_ht2aJg
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In an earlier article (hope, you’ve read it), we took a look at the CircleCI deployment system, which integrates perfectly with GitHub. Why then would we want to look any further? Well, GitHub has its own CI/CD platform called GitHub Actions, which is worth exploring. With GitHub Actions, you don’t need to rely on some external, albeit cool, service.

In this article we’re going to try using GitHub Actions to deploy the server part of InterSystems Package Manager, ZPM-registry, on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

Hi Everyone,

Are you ready yet? Have you packed all you'll need for the summit? And don't forget the needed power-socket adapters if you come from outside the US!

Have you signed up for the Container Bootcamp on Sunday? Or one of the various Experience Labs, the many informative sessions and one of the symposia on Wednesday afternoon?

Again, there is a mobile app for attendees that should help you keep it all under control and even allow you to book time with InterSystems personnel for a one-on-one deep-dive on whatever you need.