#Debugging

In this article I'll cover testing and debugging Caché web applications (mainly REST) with external tools. Second part covers Caché tools.

You wrote server-side code and want to test it from a client or already have a web application and it doesn't work. Here comes debugging. In this article I'll go from the easiest to use tools (browser) to the most comprehensive (packet analyzer), but first let's talk a little about most common errors and how they can be resolved.

One of the most important features during application development is the ability to debug your code easily. Because of the asynchrnous nature, a standard Node.js application server works single-threaded by default. When you are developing applications using an IDE like Visual Studio Code, you can very easily debug your Node.js process:

First, download the free Visual Studio Code IDE (@code) and install it on your development machine.

Hi Community,

I would like to share with you my experience regarding to debugging via Atelier.

I'm developing a REST API and would like to attach to a process when I call the API via a REST Client tool, for example Postman. The purpose is to inspect values from HEADER and BODY of the HTTP request during the debugging process.

Come on! How am I doing? I am going to demonstrate that by using a class from SAMPLES namespace.

1 - Open Atelier;

2 - Open your REST Service class;

3 - Go to the method related to the URI that you need to debug;

The Command extension enables the execution of Multi-Line Commands from Terminal prompt.

Terminal Multi-Line Input with Edit, Insert, Delete, Print extension for IRIS and Caché
IRIS and Caché have just single command lines in terminal available
This Multi-Line Commands Editor also will execute the Multi-line Commands.
In addition, it is independent of access to %SYS and can be installed in any namespace

Special thanks to @Jeffrey Drumm who inspired me to this and supported me as beta-tester.

Not everyone knows that InterSystems Caché has a built-in tool for code profiling called Caché Monitor.

Its main purpose (obviously) is the collection of statistics for programs running in Caché. It can provide statistics by program, as well as detailed Line-by-Line statistics for each program.

Using Caché Monitor

Let’s take a look at a potential use case for Caché Monitor and its key features. So, in order to start the profiler, you need to go to the terminal and switch to the namespace that you want to monitor, then launch the %SYS.MONLBL system routine:

I'm sure you have met this situation:

• There is a bug in a System that you can't reproduce yourself locally
• You need to run a few lines in the affected instance
• You get full access to System Management Portal
• But there is just no terminal, nor console, nor access with Studio, Atelier or VSCode
• How to run your few lines for testing ???

In the WRC, we often see customers who have encountered a problem viewing their SOAP Catalog pages in a browser. This article will explain why the error is being encountered, as well as suggest a fix. This explanation is focused on the symptoms seen in InterSystems IRIS, but similar behavior can be seen in more recent versions of Caché.

Hi, if you develop production with HealthShare, you may have noticed there is a nice tracing feature available - HS.Util.Trace.Operations. This feature allows visually tracing debug information, in structured way. It complements good old logging macros like $$$LOGINFO, $$$TRACE and alike.

I use this feature a lot. However, it has limited functionality, it works nice with classes that extend XML Adapter, streams or data types, but it doesn't work well with arbitrary objects that do no extend from XML Adapter.

From time to time, we get the previous question in support, something or someone is using more licenses than expected, and we need to find what.

We have two scenarios. The first scenario is when we realize that the licenses are exhausted when the application does not work or when we try to connect through the terminal and get the "lovely"

<LICENSE LIMIT EXCEEDED> message:

DeepSeeButtons is available on Open Exchange! This tool will generate a diagnostic report of your DeepSee environment.

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.

You might have encountered this and not known how to prevent it, or perhaps not even noticed it...

The latest release of Serenji focuses on the debug experience. Not only can you now debug on the spot, no matter where you are or what you're doing, but we've also added some smaller features that will make debugging more straightforward. 

• Run and Debug CodeLenses - clickable links above each class method, procedure, subroutine or extrinsic function.
• Intuitive prompting for entrypoints and arguments - when debugging a class method, produce, subroutine or extrinsic function. 
• Shaded read-only background - to clearly differentiate between documents which are editable and those that are read-only. 
• Program output in debug console - output is shown in the debug console. 
• Serenji commands on Server Manager's namespace trees - allowing you to launch Serenji through Server Manager. 

Find out more in our release notes here. 

There is a popular package "WebTerminal". It is excellent in most situations.
Except: