Article
· May 15, 2020 3m read
Debugging in HealthShare

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.

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Article
· Mar 3, 2021 4m read
Access to IRIS from Rust

What do you think If I will say you, that very soon you will be able to connect to IRIS from the application written in Rust.

What is Rust

Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. Rust is syntactically similar to C++, but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker to validate references. Rust achieves memory safety without garbage collection, and reference counting is optional. (c) Wikipedia

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The following post outlines a more flexible architectural design for DeepSee. As in the previous example, this implementation includes separate databases for storing the DeepSee cache, DeepSee implementation and settings, and synchronization globals. This example introduces one new databases to store the DeepSee indices. We will redefine the global mappings so that the DeepSee indices are not mapped together with the fact and dimension tables.

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Purpose

Most CloudFormation articles are Linux-based (no wonder), but there seems to be a demand for automation for Windows as well. Based on this original article by Anton, I implemented an example of deploying a mirror cluster to Windows servers using CloudFormation.I also added a simple walk through.
The complete source code can be found here.

Update: 2021 March 1 I added a way to connect to Windows shell by public key authentication via a bastion host as a one-liner.

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Your may not realize it, but your InterSystems Login Account can be used to access a very wide array of InterSystems services to help you learn and use InterSystems IRIS and other InterSystems technologies more effectively. Continue reading to learn more about how to unlock new technical knowledge and tools using your InterSystems Login account. Also - after reading, please participate in the Poll at the bottom, so we can see how this article was useful to you!

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Article
· Nov 2, 2023 3m read
How to hide the source program

InterSystems FAQ rubric

For routines (*.mac)

You can hide the source by exporting/importing only the *.obj that is generated after compiling the source program.

The command execution example specifies EX1Sample.obj and EX2Sample.obj, which are generated by compiling EX1Sample.mac and EX2Sample.mac, as export targets and exports them to the second argument file.

After moving to another namespace, I am using the exported XML file to perform the import.

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Deploying InterSystems HealthShare code, supporting lookups and artifacts like ssl certs, keys etc is relatively straight forward using Gitlab Runners. Not only does this approach enable managing the code base and deploying with git type workflows, but it also lends to a speedy recovery and repeatable environments for some implementations.

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Hi Developers!

As discussed in previous parts of Package Manager stories to turn your IRIS application into a deployable package you just need to introduce the module.xml file into the root folder of the repository and describe all the resources.

I’m pleased to introduce you to a new project template on Open Exchange which contains examples of how to make different types of resources of your InterSystems IRIS application a part of the ObjectScript package and so make the deployable ObjectSctipt package.

Let's see how you can describe your application resources using this template project as an example.

See the details below.

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This is a FYI for anyone who has experienced the following error after upgrading an existing instance to any product based on Caché 2017.2.2. In our case, the products are HealthShare HealthConnect for Redhat x64 and for Windows x86-64 but I believe it would be a common problem for any InterSystems product on any platform, if based on Caché 2017.2.2. After upgrading our development instance from 2016.2.2 to 2017.2.2, we experienced the following errors when attempting to start a pre-existing Java Object Gateway that was defined prior to the upgrade:

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Article
· Mar 2, 2024 4m read
IKO - Lessons Learned (Part 1 - Helm)

The IKO documentation is robust. A single web page, that consists of about 50 actual pages of documentation. For beginners that can be a bit overwhelming. As the saying goes: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Let's start with the first bite: helm.

What is Helm?

Helm is to Kubernetes what the InterSystems Package Manager (IPM, formerly ObjectScript Package Manager - ZPM) is to IRIS.

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Being interoperable is more and more important nowadays. InterSystems IRIS 2022.1 comes with a new messaging API to communicate with event streaming platforms like Kafka, AWS SQS/SNS, JMS and RabbitMQ.

This article shows how you can connect to Kafka and AWS SQS easily.
We start with a brief discussion of the basic concepts and terms of event streaming platforms.

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Article
· Jan 26, 2022 4m read
Container configuration management

If you're deploying to more than one environment/region/cloud/customer, you will inevitably encounter the issue of configuration management.

While all (or just several) of your deployments can share the same source code, some parts, such as configuration (settings, passwords) differ from deployment to deployment and must be managed somehow.

In this article, I will try to offer several tips on that topic. This article talks mainly about container deployments.

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When you install an IRIS or Caché instance on Windows Server, you'll usually need to install it under a specific user account that has network access permissions. This is very handy when you needs to access network resources for creating files or directly accessing printers.

TL;DR: see key takeaways at the bottom!

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If you have an app that uses some Caché client Windows components that are not included into CacheODBC distribution (e.g. CacheActiveX.dll), you need to proceed Caché client installation on end user's client computers and/or MS Terminal Servers. Being a part of Caché client's installation, Caché Cube is installed along with other components and is autostarted with every user's session. So, it becomes visible to every user.

To make it completely invisible, you can just move CACHE.lnk file from

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We now get to make use of the IKO.

Below we define the environment we will be creating via a Custom Resource Definition (CRD). It lets us define something outside the realm of what the Kubernetes standard knows (this is objects such as your pods, services, persistent volumes (and claims), configmaps, secrets, and lots more). We are building a new kind of object, an IrisCluster object.

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Some Usage cases

1. A deployment may consist of two high availability instances and two disaster recovery instances in a different data center.

The corresponding UAT environment could replicate this giving a total of 8 instances. How do you confirm CPF and Scheduled task alignment across ALL instances.

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Hi Developers!

Many of you are looking for samples on how to work with InterSystems IRIS Analytics, formerly known as DeepSee.

There is a Samples BI module with Patients and Holefoods examples which is available on Github with source code. The installation steps are clear but take time.

Recently we added the option to run IRIS Community Edition containers with ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) on board. This simplifies the installation to the "run-one-command" step for the modules submitted to ZPM Community Registry. And thus we can benefit the Samples BI installation with ZPM.

And here is how you can run it on your laptop. Let's go!

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Hi developers!

Often we need to deploy some data along with code pieces of the application.

And for InterSystems IRIS developers the question could sound: "How can I deploy the data I have in globals?"

InterSystems IRIS Globals Model QuickStart | InterSystems

Here I want to suggest to you one of the approaches - deploying global data using the ZPM package manager.

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Hi Developers!

Another way to start using InterSystems ObjectScript Package Manager is to use prebuilt container images of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition and InterSystems IRIS for Health Community Edition.

We deploy this IRIS images on DockerHub and you can run it with the following command:

docker run --rm -p 52773:52773 --init --name my-iris -d intersystemsdc/iris-community:2019.4.0.383.0-zpm

Launch a terminal with:

docker exec -it my-iris iris session IRIS

And install zpm-module as:

USER>zpm 

zpm: USER>install objectscript-math

[objectscript-math] Reload START

[objectscript-math] Reload SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Module object refreshed.

[objectscript-math] Validate START

[objectscript-math] Validate SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Compile START

[objectscript-math] Compile SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Activate START

[objectscript-math] Configure START

[objectscript-math] Configure SUCCESS

[objectscript-math] Activate SUCCESS

zpm: USER>

And use same commands for InterSystems IRIS for Health using the tag: intersystemsdc/irishealth-community:2019.4.0.383.0-zpm

The images are being published on IRIS Community Edition and IRIS Community Edition for Health repositories of Docker Hub.

We will update tags with every new release of IRIS and ZPM.

Happy coding!

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Hi folks!

Often, when we develop commercial solutions, there is a necessity to deploy solutions without source code, e.g., in order to preserve the IP.

One of the ways how this can be achieved is to use InterSystems Package Manager.

Here I asked Midjourney to paint an intellectual property of software:

How this can be achieved with IPM?

In fact, this is very simple; just add the Deploy="true" clause in the Resource element in your module.xml manifest. Documentation.

I decided to provide the simplest possible example to illustrate how it works and also to give you a development environment template to let start building and deploying your own modules without source code. He we go!

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Article
· Jul 4, 2023 2m read
Build iris image with cpf merge

When it comes to build an iris image, we can use the cpf merge files.

Here is an cpf merge example:

[Actions]
CreateDatabase:Name=IRISAPP_DATA,Directory=/usr/irissys/mgr/IRISAPP_DATA

CreateDatabase:Name=IRISAPP_CODE,Directory=/usr/irissys/mgr/IRISAPP_CODE

CreateNamespace:Name=IRISAPP,Globals=IRISAPP_DATA,Routines=IRISAPP_CODE,Interop=1

ModifyService:Name=%Service_CallIn,Enabled=1,AutheEnabled=48

CreateApplication:Name=/frn,NameSpace=IRISAPP,DispatchClass=Formation.REST.Dispatch,AutheEnabled=48

ModifyUser:Name=SuperUser,PasswordHash=a31d24aecc0bfe560a7e45bd913ad27c667dc25a75cbfd358c451bb595b6bd52bd25c82cafaa23ca1dd30b3b4947d12d3bb0ffb2a717df29912b743a281f97c1,0a4c463a2fa1e7542b61aa48800091ab688eb0a14bebf536638f411f5454c9343b9aa6402b4694f0a89b624407a5f43f0a38fc35216bb18aab7dc41ef9f056b1,10000,SHA512
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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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Hi folks!

Sometimes we need the docker image of the InterSystems IRIS solution we build to be published on some docker registry. The cases could be:

  1. Deploy it then in Kubernetes cluster
  2. Let your pal run the image of your public repo without building it locally.

You can push the image to Docker Hub Registry or Github Registry.

In this very short article, I provide a way how to do it automatically on every push to your GitHub repository.

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The IKO allows for sidecars. The idea behind them is to have direct access to a specific instance of IRIS. If we have mirrored data nodes, the web gateway will (correctly) only give us access to the primary node. But perhaps we need access to a specific instance. The sidecar is the solution.

Building on the example from the previous article, we introduce the sidecar by using a mirrored data node and of course arbiter.

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