#Debugging

Hello!!!

Data migration often sounds like a simple "move data from A to B task" until you actually do it. In reality, it is a complex process that blends planning, validation, testing, and technical precision.

Over several projects where I handled data migration into a HIS which runs on IRIS (TrakCare), I realized that success comes from a mix of discipline and automation.

Here are a few points which I want to highlight.

1. vscode extensions : intersystems.language-server-2.8.0@linux-arm64.vsix

2.  api/atelier web application is enabled

3. vscode connect failed.

Intro

If you ever wondered how to debug some requests that are being made to or from IRIS, well here is a little tutorial on how to do that.

During a complex project, usually you get the specifications and implement the communication between IRIS and other things based on that. But from the paper to the real world there's usually a huge gap and you need to know why you are receiving an error on a parameter, on a header, you are not receiving the data and so on.

Good morning,

We would need help, thanks in advance for your help. 🙂

We have been trying to debug the following error, when sending a DICOM from a "EnsLib.DICOM.Operation.TCP" to a PACs:

We use the following AET titles at the Operation:

LocalAET: ESBSSCC-DCM

RemoteAET: HUNSCESBGWT

We have observed that we do have the transfer syntax "1.2.840.10008.5.1.4.1.1.4" with the document syntax "1.2.840.10008.1.2.4.

This is more for my memory that anything else but I thought I'd share it because it often comes up in comments, but is not in the InterSystems documentation. 

There is a wonderful utility called ^REDEBUG that increases the level of logging going into mgr\cconsole.log. 

You activate it by

a) start terminal/login

b) zn "%SYS"

c) do ^REDEBUG

d) change logging level to FFFFFFFF

if you are on you production system (with lots of traffic) I suggest you quickly reproduce the error, rename the cconsole.log file, and repeat the steps above to set the logging level to FF.

Hi developers. Just want to share with you a finding that might save you a few important minutes of your developer life with InterSystems IRIS.

But!

It should work; you deployed the REST API correctly, and everything is just in place.

What can go wrong?

Hi Community,

We're pleased to invite you to the upcoming webinar in Hebrew:

👉 Debugging InterSystems IRIS & Health Connect: From VS Code Breakpoints to Interoperability Traces 👈

📅 Date & time: Feb 18th, 3:00 PM IDT

When production issues arise, speed and precision matter. This webinar is a practical, tool-driven walkthrough of debugging in InterSystems IRIS (including IRIS for Health) and Health Connect - starting with code-level debugging in VS Code and extending into platform and interoperability diagnostics. We will cover core logging as well as tracing techniques.

There are numerous excellent tools available for testing your REST APIs, especially when they are live. Postman, various web browser extensions, and even custom ObjectScript written with %Net.HttpRequest objects can get the job done. However, it is often difficult to test just the REST API without inadvertently involving the authentication scheme, the web application configuration, or even network connectivity. Those are a lot of hoops to jump through just to test the code within your dispatch class. The good news is that if we take our time to understand the inner workings of the %CSP.REST class, we will find an alternative option suited for testing only the contents of the dispatch class. We can set up the request and response objects to invoke the methods directly.

Hi noble developers!

Have a question/discussion. Sometimes, while developing, we'd need to connect VSCode directly to a remote server (e.g., stage one) for debugging purposes. And after change back to local one. And then to remote again.

How do you perform this switching in VSCode in a convenient way?

I have several settings.json files (settings_local, settings_remote) which I put to a main settings.json when I need to make VSCode to connect to switch the connection:

Is it the best practice?

You send an HTTP request and get back an HTTP error but with an HTML error page which you didn't expect... what's happening?... 🤔

Specifically for example, perhaps you tried to READ a FHIR Resource (e.g. /Patient/123) and you get back a 404 error page, even though with other Patient IDs, you get back the Resource payload, so "the page" definitely does exist... why should you be getting a 404 error page? 🙄

In this article, we will discuss all the debugging tools included in the Microsoft Visual Studio Code IDE.

What will be covered:

• Breakpoints
• Watch window
• Call Stack

Let's start by learning about debugging requirements!

Prerequisites

There are two plugins (extensions) for debugging ObjectScript:

The first is part of the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension Pack. The second is Serenji, a standalone plugin that provides an editor, file manager, and debugging functionality. Both plugins can be installed from the plugin store. To activate key functionality, Serenji requires a license. For this article, we'll use the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension Pack to reduce the learning curve. After you've mastered the basics, you can consider purchasing a paid license for Serenji.

I'm pleased to announce version 2.6.0 of the VS Code ObjectScript extension, containing a number of enhancements that make a developer's life easier. Some highlights are described below. As always, find the full list of modifications in the CHANGELOG, including many bug and vulnerability fixes.

Switch namespaces quickly

Thanks to @Olli Tanskanen at partner company JediSoft Oy for this enhancement! You can now switch namespaces from the Server Actions menu (when using client-side folders only).

Fast, asynchronous server-side search

This one requires InterSystems IRIS 2023.

Hi developers!

How do you debug implementation code in .impl classes of REST.API in InterSystems IRIS?

Especially if you don't have access to globals, so no things like: 

Set ^AAA="here we are"

not possible in this case.

Suppose I have the following signature of the REST.API method called as POST and containing JSON. :

Can someone help me understand what type of user error (?) is going on here please?

One one system, I write out a group of $c() values and get the expected results:

USER>for i=250:1:260 { write i," ", $c(i),! }
250 ú
251 û
252 ü
253 ý
254 þ
255 ÿ
256 Ā
257 ā
258 Ă
259 ă
260 Ą

USER>w $zv
IRIS for Windows (x86-64) 2023.1.4 (Build 580U) Fri Apr 19 2024 11:16:07 EDT
USER>

On another system, I get some unexpected results:

USER>for i=250:1:260 { write i," ",$c(i),! }
250 ú
251 û
252 ü
253 ý
254 þ
255 ÿ
256 Ā
257 Ä
258 Ä‚
259 ă
260 Ä„

USER>w $zv
IRIS for Windows (x86-64) 2025.1.1 (Build 308U) Thu Jul 10 2025 16:00:01 EDT
USER>

Following 2 local Webinars we had focused on VS Code ["Intro" and "Beyond Basics"; in Hebrew], I prepared for the participants some related links of relevant resources which we sent as a follow-up. Sharing them here as well for the benefit of the Community.
You are all of course welcome to add more useful resources.

For example, you start debugging the AAA function, which calls the BBB function, then goes to the CCC^ABC function in a different routine and ends up while executing XXX^XYZ. No other routines or functions are visited in this example. What I would like is to get the record of AAA -> BBB -> CCC^ABC -> XXX^XYZ. No marking each function with recording code should be involved: too time consuming, too many functions in real code.

UPD: Iris has built in %SYS.Trace for this purpose but this class is apparently absent in Cache 2017. Did not find any substitutes yet.

In this section, we will explore how to use Python as the primary language in IRIS, allowing you to write your application logic in Python while still leveraging the power of IRIS.

• Introduction Python First Approach in IRIS
  • How to use it (irispython)
    • What is irispython?
    • Example of using irispython
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • Using WSGI
    • How to use it
    • Example of using WSGI
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • DB-API
    • How to use it
    • Example of using DB-API
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Alternatives
    • Conclusion
  • Notebook
    • How to use it
    • Example of using Notebook
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
• Bonus Section
  • Using a native interpreter (no irispython)
    • How to use it
    • Pros
    • Cons
  • DB-API Community Edition
    • How to use it
    • Example of using DB-API
    • Pros
    • Cons
  • Debugging Python Code in IRIS
    • How to use it
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • IoP (Interoperability on Python)
• Conclusion

Now that we have a good understanding of Python and its features, let's explore how we can leverage Python within IRIS.

• Introduction to Python in IRIS
• Language Tag
  • How to use it?
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion
• Importing Python Modules (pypi modules)
  • How to use it
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion
• Importing Python Modules (custom modules)
  • How to use it
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion

This will be a short article about Python dunder methods, also known as magic methods.

What are Dunder Methods?

Dunder methods are special methods in Python that start and end with double underscores (__). They allow you to define the behavior of your objects for built-in operations, such as addition, subtraction, string representation, and more.

Some common dunder methods include:

• __init__(self, ...): Called when an object is created.
  • Like our %OnNew method in ObjectScript.
• __str__(self): Called by the built-in function and print to represent the object as a string.

I am attempting to follow the tutorial at Publishing Web Services Using Caché | Caché Web Services QuickStart Tutorial | Caché & Ensemble 2018.1.4 – 2018.1.11 to build a toy SOAP web-service using Cache but am running into what I suspect are permissions issues, or perhaps setting up the "plumbing" to get an incoming request to call the web-service methods.

Ensemble instance running on local laptop. Only the Ensemble private web-server installed on the machine (no IIS or Apache).

1. A Motivating Example

Embedded Python has been around for a while. You probably followed the tutorials and learned about it. However, if you've tried to combine Python and ObjectScript in real development work, you probably ran into situations where you get an error message like this:

USER>Do##class

It's a long string for limited information. All we know from this message is that a Python error occurred where (a) the error type is ZeroDivisionError; and (b)

Hey everyone,

I'm diving deeper into Caché ObjectScript and would love to open a discussion around the most useful tips, tricks, and best practices you’ve learned or discovered while working with it.

Whether you're an experienced developer or just getting started, ObjectScript has its own set of quirks and powerful features—some well-documented, others hidden gems. I’m looking to compile a helpful set of ideas from the community.

How do you collect stack info when debugging non-interactive jobs?

I cobbled this together today from the docs, but maybe there's something pre-built? LOG^%ETN()?

set""for

Log meth

We are calling a REST web-service from Ensemble using EnsLib.HTTP.OutboundAdapter and redefining the adapter class to set custom headers as described by @Eduard Lebedyuk here: How to set Content-Type

During development we accidentally stumbled across puzzling behaviour - we now suspect that the  object created in the linked example is being reused in the following scenario:

1. request is created as described and sent to web-service, so an instance of a %Net.HttpRequest object exists and is known to the EnsLib.HTTP.OutboundAdapter

Hi colleagues!

Yet another time I figured that there is no super-simple way to display error from %Status variable, but I need it relatively often in a terminal.

Yes, I know about $$$ Macro, but they are not superhelpful in a terminal.

My usual behavior is to try to remember by heart or copy from somewhere the formula:

USER>w $System.Status.DisplayError(st)

ISCLOGs are a useful debugging tool provided with IRIS that can help you troubleshoot many different issues. For more information about creating these logs, please see the following IRIS documentation: "Logging".

This log is written to the ^ISCLOG global stored in the %SYS namespace. Each global node is a separate event, with additional information sometimes logged to the subnode.

Each entry consists of a list containing the following fields: ID, Category, LogLevel, Message, Namespace, Process ID, Routine, SessionID, Tag, and, TimeAdded

We have some ObjectScript code in a custom business process:

When Log Trace Events is ticked on the business process in the Production view in the management portal, the argument is obviously computed.

Our question is whether the argument is computed when Log Trace Events is not ticked? Don't want to accidentally include something in a $$$TRACE() statement that takes enough computation to make a performance difference when released to production, even though the final output is not written to the event log.