Have you ever been editing files in VS Code, but needed to check a global value or run a few ObjectScript commands? Now you can, with no setup required! If you have vscode-objectscript extension version 2.10.0 or later and are connected to InterSystems IRIS 2023.2 or later, you can now open a terminal connection to your server, regardless of where it's located.

There are three ways to open this new terminal:

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.

While starting the development with IRIS we have a distribution kit or in case of Docker we are pulling the docker image and then often we need to initialize it and setup the development environment. We might need to create databases, namespaces, turn on/off some services, create resources. We often need to import code and data into IRIS instance and run some custom code to init the solution.

And there plenty of templates on Open Exchange where we suggest how to init REST, Interoperability, Analytics, Fullstack and many other templates with ObjectScript. What if we want to use only Python to setup the development environment for Embedded Python project with IRIS?

So, the recent release of Embedded Python template is the pure python boilerplate that could be a starting point for developers that build python projects with no need to use and learn ObjectScript. This article expresses how this template could be used to initialize IRIS. Here we go!

Are you preparing to use VS code for the first time? Just make sure you have enough privileges.

Have you defined your Iris server in your VS Code settings, and still get the following error?

VS Code accesses Iris/HealthConnect using the web application /api/atelier. If you do not have permission (i.e. you are using an LDAP user to connect and the web application is not configured to support LDAP), this is the reason why you couldn't connect.

Are you all ready for something you wish you knew ages ago (or, in my case, a DECADE ago)? Open up a portal in your favorite instance and go to:

System Administration->Configuration->Additional Settings->Startup

Scroll down to "Terminal Prompt" and click 'Edit'. This allows you to edit what you see on your terminal prompt. You can change that to my current setting: 8,3,2

What does this do? It adds your instance name for your prompt. So now your prompt can look like:

DEVELOPMENT:USER>

Hi Developers!

As you know InterSystems IRIS Interoperability solutions contain different elements of the solution, such as: production, business rule, business process, data transformation, record mapper. And sometimes we can create and modify these elements with UI tools. And of course we need a handy and robust way to source-control the changes made with UI tools.

For a long time this was a manual (export class, element, global, etc) or cumbersome settings procedure, so the saved time with source-control UI automation was competing with lost time to setup and maintain the settings.

Now the problem doesn't exist any more. With two approaches: package first development and usage of IPM package git-source-control by @Timothy Leavitt
.

The details are below!

When you need to know the impact on a change in your project, it is very useful to see class dependencies in a network diagram. The IRIS Connections project allows you to see it.

IRIS Connections installation

If you want to install using ZPM:

Hello fellow developers!

When developing with ObjectScript Package Manager, one crucial thing is the package version, which we place in the module.xml file. When we add changes to the package and are ready to publish a new version of the package in the registry, we also need to increase the version number. This is clear, but it is annoying, and we can often forget to do that.

This small article will help you to automate such a process.

As you have probably noticed, online product documentation has advanced tremendously in the last few years. Among numerous improvements under the hood, documentation has become easier to read and navigate. And we now have a powerful search engine that gets you to what you need more accurately than we could ever do with the old system of shipping documentation in the product. While most of you have probably had nothing but positive impacts on your workflows, it has come to my attention that some of you may be having a slight problem accessing custom class documentation.

Hi! As a developer who was forced to move from Mac to Windows (temporary) I found some things a bit confusing. In this article I would like to talk about some tweaks I made to make my experience smoother. I think it can help not only Mac users who need to use Windows environment (for ex. in VMs), but also can help some Windows users to make some things more convenient. Of course, all the points are subjective, the best setup is one that works for you.

All the tweaks are related to Windows 10 as I don’t have an access to Windows 11 at the moment.

Hi Developers!

This is yet another short post that is intended to simplify developers' life. Now we'll talk about how to make GitHub run unit tests with every push to the repository by adding just one file to the repo. For free. On Github Cloud. Sounds great, isn't it?

It is possible and very easy to do. Credit goes to @Dmitry Maslennikov (and his repo), ZPM Package Manager, and GitHub Actions. Let's see how this all works!

For some years I missed being able to offer, to everybody interested in ObjectScript, a tutorial more or less complete, to start with ObjectScript. Something that could help more and make things easier to those new developers that come to our technology... something intermediate, halfway between the common "Hello World!", that doesn't really get you further, and the "Advanced Training", that is unaffordable because of lack of time,etc.

If there were something truly helpful not only as an introduction to the ecosystem, but as a starting point, as a boost, to really start to walk into ObjectScript and move forward by yourself... wouldn't that be awesome?

The InterSystems Server Manager extension for Visual Studio Code lets you define connections to your servers, list their namespaces and edit or view code there. You can also launch Portal for a server.

Server Manager 3.0 improves security by becoming a VS Code Authentication Provider. It is my entry for the November 2021 InterSystems Security Contest. Click here to visit the contest page where you may decide to vote for this entry. Please ignore the clickable "Contestant" label on this article header above, as it relates to a different contest for new DC articles. If you want to support me in that contest, simply "like" this post.

We're hosting our Deltanji and Serenji user group session tomorrow - there's still time to register, if you haven't already.

We'll be showcasing some advanced features of Deltanji and Serenji in VS Code with time for a discussion - so feel free to bring along any problems you need help solving or share your feedback on our tools. We'd love to hear your thoughts. If you're interested in our tools this is a great chance to hear what others have to say, as well as asking your own questions.

Date: Wednesday, November 3rd

Time: 11-12pm EDT / 3-4pm GMT.

Let us know you'll be attending on Eventbrite.

We hope to see you tomorrow, but if you're unable to make it you can email me at laurelj@georgejames.com and I can share a recording of the session.