Here are a few examples of conversions and operations you might need, along with links to documentation where you can learn more.

At the time I wrote this, Eastern Daylight Time was in effect for my Caché system.

How Caché keeps the time and date

Caché has a simple time format, with a longer range of recognized dates compared to some other technologies.

The current time is maintained in a special variable $HOROLOG ($H):

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Article
· Jul 8, 2020 7m read
Tips for debugging with %Status

Introduction

If you're solving complex problems in ObjectScript, you probably have a lot of code that works with %Status values. If you have interacted with persistent classes from an object perspective (%Save, %OpenId, etc.), you have almost certainly seen them. A %Status provides a wrapper around a localizable error message in InterSystems' platforms. An OK status ($$$OK) is just equal to 1, whereas a bad status ($$$ERROR(errorcode,arguments...)) is represented as a 0 followed by a space followed by a $ListBuild list with structured information about the error. $System.Status (see class reference) provides several handy APIs for working with %Status values; the class reference is helpful and I won't bother duplicating it here. There have been a few other useful articles/questions on the topic as well (see links at the end). My focus in this article will be on a few debugging tricks techniques rather than coding best practices (again, if you're looking for those, see links at the end).

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Article
· Apr 20, 2021 3m read
Why gj :: locate?

You may think it isn’t too difficult to get from label+offset^routine to the actual source line responsible for the error. For an expert it isn't that hard... most of the time. But there are enough oddities and special rules that even an expert can get it wrong, whilst spending a lot of time trying to get there.

gj :: locate is the latest tool from George James Software – it debugs any error, class or routine by converting the location of an error in compiled .int code to the corresponding location in your source, and then taking you right there.

Image this scenario…

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Creating your own commands or shortcut is one of the strongest features of ObjectScript
If you create your own Language Extensions to ObjectScript you mostly have to find the
proper %ZLANGC00 or %ZLANGV00 or %ZLANGF00 and add the extensions manually.

A few utilities do it already automatically (ZPM, ZME, ..)
This utility allows you to add your extensions also programmatically.

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Hi Developers!

Recently we released the updated version 0.1.3 of ObjectScript Package Manager (ZPM) which comes with the support of simplified ObjectScript sources folder structure.

What 'simplified' does mean?

Before 0.1.3 ZPM expected the following structure:

/src

---/cls  - for ObjectScript classes

---/cls/package_name/class_name.cls

---/cls/package_name/class_name2.cls

---/mac - or Mac ObjectScript routines

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine.mac

---/mac/package_name/mac_routine2.mac

---/inc - for ObjectScript macro include files.

---/inc/package_name/include_file.inc

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Hi Developers!

Many of you publish your InterSystems ObjectScript libraries on Open Exchange and Github.

But what do you do to ease the usage and collaboration to your project for developers?

In this article, I want to introduce the way how to introduce an easy way to launch and contribute to any ObjectScript project just by copying a standard set of files to your repository.

Let's go!

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Moving over from Studio To VSCode like many other will do now the ObjectScript plugin reached version 1.0, I noticed I was missing some items in the objectscript explorer. For example when creating a Rest API using the spec first approach, 3 classes are generated, an application.impl, application.disp and application.spec class, but the disp class was missing in the Object Explorer.

As the application.disp is a generated class, for showing these classes you need to turn this on by hitting the switch on the object explorer:

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Article
· Feb 18, 2021 2m read
Basic JSON Compare

Hi Dev Community

I thought i would share a little method I knocked together to traverse and compare 2 JSON objects for basic equivilance. I'm currently working on some data migration, and wanted a basic sanity check to validate that the JSON output is basically equivliant between the old and new, excluding a few things like timestamps.

It's a basic little recurvsive method, that will bubble up any differences over a nested structure. It's very low tech, as that's all I need it to do, but I thought it might be useful for others?

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Hi colleagues!

Every day Johns Hopkins University publishes new data on coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic status.

I built a simple InterSystems IRIS Analytics dashboard using InterSystems IRIS Community Edition in docker deployed on GCP Kubernetes which shows key measures of the disease outbreak.

This dashboard is an example of how information from CSV could be analyzed with IRIS Analytics and deployed to GCP Kubernetes in a form of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition.

Added the interactive map of the USA:

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Article
· Jan 16, 2021 3m read
Creating and listing XData definitions

Hi InterSystems Community!

The ObjectScript language of InterSystems IRIS has the ability to extend classes using a very interesting feature called XData.

It is a section in your class that can be used to create custom definitions to be used within the class itself and also externally.

To create one or more XData definitions for your class is very easy, see the example:

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Tiny web application that allows you to anonymize CSV files. Based on InterSystems IRIS®

Version: store/intersystems/iris-community:2020.3.0.221.0

Application

Sample CSV where Date of Birth and Sex will remain untouched, while the rest should be anonymized.

before

The application recognizes the header columns and allows the user to chose which ones to ignore.

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Article
· Sep 10, 2020 3m read
How To Create "Write-Only" Code

One of the leading benefits of ObjectScript is the speed and efficiency it allows for an experienced developer. Let's look at an example of how you can benefit from ObjectScript today.

Suppose you have a class that stores the names of your users. We'll call the class Data.User, and give it a string property Name. Next, we will need a method to create a new user or update an existing one. A naive, simplistic approach might look like this example:

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Article
· Feb 5, 2016 11m read
Class Queries in InterSystems IRIS

Class Queries in InterSystems IRIS (and Cache, Ensemble, HealthShare) is a useful tool that separates SQL queries from Object Script code. Basically, it works like this: suppose that you want to use the same SQL query with different arguments in several different places.In this case you can avoid code duplication by declaring the query body as a class query and then calling this query by name. This approach is also convenient for custom queries, in which the task of obtaining the next row is defined by a developer. Sounds interesting? Then read on!

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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

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Article
· Oct 6, 2020 2m read
An overview of npm-iris

What is npm-iris?

N.P.M stands for "No Project Mess."

N.P.M. is a Project & Task Management app that uses InterSystems IRIS and Bootstrap 4.

No Project Mess is created to help developers and small business companies to reduce complexity in their daily problems, with a simple and intuitive projects and tasks management software.

It offers different views for your tasks, from a spreadsheet, kanban, calendar, or even Gantt!

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Article
· Aug 2, 2020 1m read
Application Errors Analytics

Hi Developers!

As you know the application errors live in ^ERRORS global. They appear there if you call:

d e.Log() 

in a Catch section of Try-Catch.

With @Robert Cemper's approach, you can now use SQL to examine it.

Inspired by Robert's module I introduced a simple IRIS Analytics module which shows these errors in a dashboard:

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Article
· Jul 27, 2020 2m read
ZPMshow, a helper for tired fingers

The offer of ZPM is growing daily and the short names and
acronyms of the offer are sometimes hard to understand and
also hard to type with my lazy fingers.

So I decided to have

  • a listing with the descriptions from the repository,
  • split in short junks to avoid backscroll,
  • controlled forward / backward scrolling,
  • the option to select my packages by number,
  • to install or uninstall with limited typing.

It runs with do ^zpmshow

A snapshot from the screen:

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Article
· Jul 20, 2020 1m read
Fast JSON formatting (IRIS)

t's also an example for a customized command extension (ZZJSON) in IRIS

IRIS has a nice %JSON.Formatter class.
But for debugging it is not really handy.
see:

ZWRITE js1  
js1="{""Name"":""Cunningham,John C."",""SSN"":""294-11-9150"",""DOB"":""1933-01-08"",""Home"":{""Street"":""4249 Ash Street"",""City"":""Tampa"",""State"":""MD"",""Zip"":""30176""},""FavoriteColors"":\[""White"",""Red"",""Green""]}"   

so you proceed for the most simple case

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Hi Devs!

Last weekend I had been testing the newborn csvgen module and was looking for a CSV file to test - thus I came across an interesting datafile on Data.World with Game of Throne episodes statistics. Death statistics. These folks documented all the murders through all the 8 seasons and noted where, who, from what clan with what weapon had killed another one.

So I imported it and made an IRIS Analytics dashboard.

You Know Nothing, Jon Snow | You Know Nothing, Jon Snow | Know ...

Don't worry, Jon, with this dashboard we can figure out something ). See the details below.

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