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#Node.js

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Node.js is an open-source, cross-platform JavaScript run-time environment for executing JavaScript code server-side.

I’m excited to announce that InterSystems will be joining the open source community for InterSystems ObjectScript extension to Visual Studio Code. Early this year I posted that we were on a journey to redefine the future of our IDE strategy, and what came out of that is Visual Studio Code is the IDE that can support that future.

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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.

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Article
· Feb 8, 2019 2m read
Client Websockets based on Node.js

It will demonstrate the wide range that is openend by making use
of the power embedded in Node.js and its adapter to Caché, Ensemble, Health,..*
Node / JavaScript have wide reputation to work as a WebSocket client.
By using the Caché adapter it becomes easy to control it and to consume the results as a
Client for WebSocket Servers and to collect the replies in Caché, Ensemble, ..

I used node-v6.16.0-x64.msi and cache610.node as cache.node

You provide a Global for input:

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Article
· Jan 16, 2017 15m read
Part I – Thoughts about package manager

Have you ever thought what could be a reason why some development environment (database, language) would eventually become popular? What part of this popularity could be explain as language quality? What by new and idioms approaches introduced by early language adopters? What is due to healthy ecosystem collaboration? What is due to some marketing genius?

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Those of you who keep an eye on developments in the mainstream of IT will be aware that a major upheaval has been occurring over the last 5 or so years, in which JavaScript has exploded in popularity and importance. Largely as a result of its server-side incarnation - Node.js - it has broken free of just being the scripting language that you use in web browser, to becoming the world's most popular language and enterprise technology of choice.

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Article
· Mar 19, 2019 9m read
A Tutorial On WebSockets

Intro

Most server-client communication on the web is based on a request and response structure. The client sends a request to the server and the server responds to this request. The WebSocket protocol provides a two-way channel of communication between a server and client, allowing servers to send messages to clients without first receiving a request. For more information on the WebSocket protocol and its implementation in InterSystems IRIS, see the links below.

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Some time ago I got a WRC case transferred where a customer asks for the availability of a raw DEFLATE compression/decompression function built-in Caché.

When we talk about DEFLATE we need to talk about Zlib as well, since Zlib is the de-facto standard free compression/decompression library developed in the mid-90s.

Zlib works on particular DEFLATE compression/decompression algorithm and the idea of encapsulation within a wrapper (gzip, zlib, etc.).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zlib

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Full-Stack JavaScript development allows you to create state-of-the-art applications with Caché. With any (web) app you build nowadays, one has to make a lot of architectural decisions and you want to make the right ones. With the Node.js connector available for Caché, you can create a very powerful server side application server, allowing you to use the latest JavaScript technology and frameworks client- and server-side.

With all these new technologies, the most important is to integrate them in the most efficient way and to create a very productive development experience. This article willl get you started step-by-step with Node.js technology.

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Developing a Full-Stack JavaScript web app with Caché requires you to bring together the right building blocks. Previously, I outlined the basic steps to install and connect Node.js to Caché and make it's powerful multi-model database capabilites available for use with Node.js. You can use Caché as a NoSQL-, document- (with unique key-level access!), SQL- and object-database with Node.js. When developing JavaScript applications, you'll see how powerful this combination is and makes Caché a perfect fit for Node.js.

In the first part of this article series I will show how to get started with the React framework, one of the most popular frameworks currently taking over front-end development. In the next parts you'll learn how to connect a basic web app to a Caché back-end.

You'll see, it's very easy to get started with this technology - you can even compare the amount of basic knowledge you need to COS because you only need to know a few basic concepts to start!

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The latest WebComponent-based, SB Admin 2-themed QEWD Monitor application now includes a cool D3-based viewer for visualising your IRIS or Cache Globals - see example below

This qewd-monitor-adminui application is automatically installed when you install QEWD on a Windows machine

See here for details on installing QEWD on Windows:

https://github.com/robtweed/qewd-microservices-examples/blob/master/WINDOWS-IRIS-2.md#initial-steps

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Announcement
· Apr 5
Introducing mg_web

Hot on the heels of our announcement last week about our ultra-high-performance mg-dbx-napi JavaScript interface for IRIS, we are now pleased to announce a significant new technology - mg_web - which not only represents a new paradigm for JavaScript Web Frameworks, but also delivers significantly higher performance than even the fastest of the established Node.js Web Frameworks, whilst leveraging all the benefits of the big-three industry-standard Web Servers.

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I'd like to announce the release of something really rather interesting - revolutionary in fact. That may sound like hyperbole, but I don't think you'll have seen anything quite like this, or even thought it possible!

We've pushed out a new JavaScript/Node.js module named glsdb which you can read all about here in detail:

https://github.com/robtweed/glsdb

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This is the second part of my long post about package managers in operating systems and language distributions. Now, hopefully, we have managed to convince you that convenient package manager and rich 3rd party code repository is one key factor in establishing of a vibrant and fast growing ecosystem. (Another possible reason for ecosystem success is the consistent language design, but it will be topic for another day.)
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If you're interested in building a browser-based CRUD application for maintaining data on IRIS, check out the detailed, step-by-step tutorial at:

https://github.com/robtweed/qewd-microservices-examples/blob/master/WIND...

To get a preview of the application you'll build in the tutorial, along with background on its technology stack, watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-NICYqv_2s

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Developing a Full-Stack JavaScript web app with Caché requires you to bring together the right building blocks. In the previous part, we created a basic front-end React application. In the second part of this article series I will show how to choose the right back-end technology for your application. You will see Caché allows you to use many different approaches to link your front-end to your Caché server, depending on your application's needs. In this part we will set up a back-end with Node.js/QEWD and CSP/REST. In the next part we will enhance our basic web app and connect it to Caché using these technologies.

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You may have heard about our mg-dbx-napi interface for IRIS which provides insanely fast access from Node.js. If you've been following recent developments in the server-side JavaScript world, you'll be excited to know that mg-dbx-napi also works with Bun.js, the latter proving to be significantly faster than Node.js for many/most purposes.

Of course, if you're a Node.js user, you'll probably wonder how mg-dbx-napi compares with the Native API for Node.js that is included with IRIS.

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If your looking to develop a Node.JS to Caché library then you might want to consider using a pure TCP connection with a custom message transport protocol. This bypasses the native Caché connector libraries that can get stale with a new release.

Node.JS is very good at non blocking code development, so building a performant solution isn't that complex.

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Here I’ll walk you through the process of creating a simple Node/Express API and connect it to a InterSystems IRIS instance.

I won't go into much detail about how to work with any of the technologies I will mention in this tutorial but I will leave links, in case you want to learn more.

The objective here is to give you a practical guide on how to set up and connect a node.js back-end API to IRIS.

Before we get our hands dirty, make sure you have Node.js running on your machine. So I'll check:

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Those of you who are following the FullStack competition here in the Developer Community will know that I submitted an entry named qewd-conduit. I wanted to summarise why I think it's something worth you taking a bit of time to check out.

qewd-conduit uses the Node.js-based QEWD framework alongside IRIS to implement the back-end REST APIs for something known as the RealWorld Conduit application:

https://github.com/gothinkster/realworld

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