#Development Environment

I recently realized it's been far too long since I talked about the latest features in the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension for Visual Studio Code.

I'm pleased to announce version 2.12.1 of the ObjectScript extension, containing a number of enhancements that make a developer's life easier. Some highlights are described below, including the #1 requested feature from Global Summit -- XML import!

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Hi all, I have released the latest version of VSCode extension for ObjectScript already a month ago, and finally a time for the info about this new release.

So, what's new in the release:

What's new in this version

• added export setting "objectscript.export.addCategory" if enabled uses the previous behaviour, adds category folder to export folder, disabled by default
• added Server actions menu, by clicking on server info from status bar. Open Management portal, Class Reference and toggle connection.
• Class Suggestion in ##class, Extends, As, CompileAfter, DependsOn, PropertyClass
• $SYSTEM suggestion by Classes from %SYSTEM
• Import and compile folder or file by context menu in File Explorer
• Server Explorer, now possible to open any other namespace
• Macros suggestion

For details how it works now, look further.

As most of you have heard already, InterSystems announced the deprecation of Studio with the release of IRIS 2023.2.

Over the past few months, our team has been hard at work building a better Atelier experience for you. With three major new features and more than twenty enhancements, Atelier 1.2.118 makes it easier for you to develop important applications. It now also supports InterSystems IRIS Data Platform™, which enables you to rapidly build scalable, interoperable, and analytical data-rich applications.

Is anyone in the fine community of developers who work with ISC technologies looking at Microsoft's Visual Studio Code offering?

One of Bill McCormick's recent posts about Atelier referred to Visual Studio being considered the best IDE. Granted, Code is far less of a tool than VS, and probably always will be. But it claims to be open source and cross-platform, i.e. Linux and OS X as well as Windows.

One of the many benefits of using Atelier for your ObjectScript development is its integration with a wide range of source control systems. This integration enables you to use modern development workflows which increase collaboration while minimizing the risk inherent to volatile code bases.

Veteran ObjectScript developers can tell you about the workarounds that were needed before they could use source control systems with products like Caché and Ensemble. One of these was to treat the data store itself effectively as a code repository. And so shared development environments became essential for many of our customers to be productive and successful.

For code shops that rely on shared development environments, adopting Atelier might seem too complicated. This article aims to provide a practical example to guide your team towards success with Atelier.

You can find an overview of the problems and solutions in this article here, which is a good place to start. This article assumes that you are familiar with the concepts introduced there.

In this article I'll show you how to set up in your laptop, very quickly, a cluster of IRIS nodes in sharding. It's not the goal of this article neither to talk about sharding in detail nor define a deployment of a production ready architecture, but to show how to set up quickly, in your own machine, a cluster of IRIS instances configured as shard nodes, with which you'll able to play and test this functionality. If you're insterested in knowing more about sharding in IRIS, take a look at the documentation clicking here.

First and foremost, I want to remark that IRIS sharding will allow us 2 things:

• Define, load and query shard tables, which data will be distributed transparently between the cluster's nodes
• Define federated tables, which offer a global and composed view of data belonging to different tables that will be physically stored in different distributed nodes

So, as I said, we let for other article playing with shard or federated tables, and just focus now in the previous step, that is, setting up the cluster of shard nodes.

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.

The Atelier 1.2 stable release update site (https://atelier.artifactoryonline.com/atelier/updates/stable/1.2/) has been updated to 1.2.119. This build contains all of the new features and enhancements the 1.2.118 beta build has as well as a number of bug fixes. Additionally, we have documented a list of the top time-saving keyboard shortcuts to help you become more productive. Give Atelier 1.2 a try and let us know what you think! Some of the key highlights include:

Hi developers,

We're excited to let you know about the latest release of Serenji, your on-the-spot debugger from George James Software. Version 3.2.0 focuses on the debug experience and introduces zero configuration for users. No matter where you are or what you're doing, Serenji is always ready to go in just one click, so you won't lose focus by spending time setting up a launch configuration.

This enhanced debugger also takes advantage of the latest features of VS Code itself. With this powerful combination you'll be able to smoothly identify and quickly fix errors in your code, contributing to the production of quality, maintainable code... and isn't that what everyone wants?!

In this latest release you will experience:

• Debugging in just one click with zero configuration.
• Navigation directly to the source of an error using our gj :: locate technology.
• Intuitive prompting for entrypoint and arguments.
• Configurable break on error.
• Program output in debug console.
• Run and Debug CodeLenses.
• Run multiple concurrent debug sessions and consoles.
• Shaded background for read-only documents.

If you're a new user, it's now easier for you to get started. The introduction of a welcome page Walkthrough and guidance on the Explorer and Run and Debug views means you can effortlessly create your initial workspace and start debugging.

Download Serenji directly from the VS Code marketplace and take a look at our release notes to find out more about these new features and how to use them.

We offer a free 30 day trial so if you're not yet a user of Serenji but you're interested in how it can help you, drop me a message through the Developer Community or email us at info@georgejames.com.

Happy debugging!

It's been 6 months since InterSystems released Atelier 1.0 and we continue to roll out enhancements and new features through the beta channel (please see the Atelier Download page for details). In the meantime, we have received a lot of messages from the Developer Community with ideas for further improvements. Based on your feedback, we created a roadmap for Atelier 1.1 so you can conveniently track when specific features are going to be integrated.

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.