#InterSystems IRIS

Containers

With the launch of InterSystems IRIS Data Platform, we provide our product even  in a Docker container. But what is a container?

The fundamental container definition is that of a sandbox for a process.  

Containers are software-defined packages that have some similarities to virtual machines (VM) like for example they can be executed. 

Containers provide isolation without a full OS emulation. Containers are therefore much lighter than a VM. 

In this post, I am going to detail how to set up a mirror using SSL, including generating the certificates and keys via the Public Key Infrastructure built in to Caché. The goal of this is to take you from new installations to a working mirror with SSL, including a primary, backup, and DR async member, along with a mirrored database. I will not go into security recommendations or restricting access to the files. This is meant to just simply get a mirror up and running.

In this article, I would like to talk about the spec-first approach to REST API development.

While traditional code-first REST API development goes like this:

• Writing code
• REST-enabling it
• Documenting it (as a REST API)

Spec-first follows the same steps but reverse. We start with a spec, also doubling as documentation, generate a boilerplate REST app from that and finally write some business logic.

This is advantageous because:

• You always have relevant and useful documentation for external or frontend developers who want to use your REST API
• Specification created in OAS (Swagger) can be imported into a variety of tools allowing editing, client generation, API Management, Unit Testing and automation or simplification of many other tasks
• Improved API architecture.  In code-first approach, API is developed method by method so a developer can easily lose track of the overall API  architecture, however with the spec-first developer is forced to interact with an API from the position if API consumer which usually helps with designing cleaner API architecture
• Faster development - as all boilerplate code is automatically generated you won't have to write it, all that's left is developing business logic.
• Faster feedback loops - consumers can get a view of the API immediately and they can easier offer suggestions simply by modifying the spec

Let's develop our API in a spec-first approach!

Globals, these magic swords for storing data, have been around for a while, but not many people can use them efficiently or know about this super-weapon altogether.

If you use globals for tasks where they truly shine, the results may be amazing, either in terms of increased performance or dramatic simplification of the overall solution (1, 2).

Globals offer a special way of storing and processing data, which is completely different from SQL tables. They were first introduced in 1966 in the M(UMPS) programming language, which was initially used in medical databases. It is still used in the same way, but has also been adopted by some other industries where reliability and high performance are top priorities: finance, trading, etc.

Later M(UMPS) evolved into Caché ObjectScript (COS). COS was developed by InterSystems as a superset of M. The original language is still accepted by developers' community and alive in a few implementations. There are several signs of activity around the web: MUMPS Google group, Mumps User's group), effective ISO Standard, etc.

Modern global based DBMS supports transactions, journaling, replication, partitioning. It means that they can be used for building modern, reliable and fast distributed systems.

Globals do not restrict you to the boundaries of the relational model. They give you the freedom of creating data structures optimized for particular tasks. For many applications reasonable use of globals can be a real silver bullet offering speeds that developers of conventional relational applications can only dream of.

Globals as a method of storing data can be used in many modern programming languages, both high- and low-level. Therefore, this article will focus specifically on globals and not the language they once came from.

ObjectScript has at least three ways of handling errors (status codes, exceptions, SQLCODE, etc.). Most of the system code uses statuses but exceptions are easier to handle for a number of reasons. Working with legacy code you spend some time translating between the different techniques. I use these snippets a lot for reference. Hopefully they're useful to others as well.

Hi, everyone!

I want to share a personal project that started with a simple request at work: 

Is it's possible to know how many Caché licenses we are using? 

Reading other articles here in the community, I found this excellent article by  David Loveluck 

Hi everyone,

I am still learning the platform for a student project and have to do some streaming and data analysis next. Since for my case I have no "live api" I wanted to just stream json files and output the data as it comes in from the files. (basically to emulate a incoming data scenario)

So thanks to the documentation and community posts I have figured how to create a stream and read data from a JSON but since I'm also new to JSON I have some parsing problems. I don't know how to access subarrays/sub-objects via objectscript.

Hi Developers!

In March we are starting our first InterSystems IRIS Programming Contest! It's a competition in creating open-source solutions using InterSystems IRIS Data Platform.

The topic for the first contest is InterSystems IRIS, Docker and ObjectScript!

The contest will last three weeks: March 9-31, 2020. 

 Prizes:

There will be money prizes for Experts Nomination - winners will be determined by a specially selected jury:

🥇 1st place - $2,000 

🥈 2nd place - $1,000 

🥉 3rd place - $500

Also, there will be Community Nomination - an application that will receive the most votes in total:

🏆 1st place - $1,000

And we provide winners with high-level badges on Global Masters.

Hi Developers!

Often when we develop some library, tool, package, whatever on InterSystems ObjectScript we have a question, how we deploy this package on the target machine?

Also, we often expect that some other libraries already installed, so our package depends on them, and often on some particular version of it.

When you code on javascript, python, etc the role of packages deployment with dependency management takes package manager.

So, I'm pleased to announce that InterSystems ObjectScript Package Manager available!

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$LIST string format and %DynamicArray and %DynamicObject classes

IRIS, and previously Cache, contain several different ways to create a sequence containing a mixture of data values.  A data sequence that has been available for many years is the $LIST string.  Another more recent data sequence is the %DynamicArray class, which along with the %DynamicObject class, is part of the IRIS support for JSON string representation.  These two sequences involve very different tradeoffs.

$LIST String Format

A good writer is supposed to draw you in with the title and bury the answer somewhere in the article.  I suppose this makes me a bad writer – don’t think less of me, my whole feeling of self-worth comes from the opinions of internet strangers! 

Launching IRIS Using Docker

Hey Developers!

We're pleased to invite you all to the next competition of creating open-source solutions using InterSystems IRIS! Please join:

🏆 InterSystems Analytics Contest 🏆

Duration: December 7 - 27, 2020