Article
· Jul 19, 2022 4m read
Caution with Mixing OO and SQL

Mixing Object syntax with SQL is one of the nice features in Object Script. But in one case, it gave strange results, so I decided to isolate the case and describe it here.

Let's say you need to write a classmethod that updates a single property on disk. Usually, i would write that using SQL like this :

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Article
· Jun 18 2m read
Options for Python Devs + Poll!

I am writing this post primarily to gather an informal consensus on how developers are using Python in conjunction with IRIS, so please respond to the poll at the end of this article! In the body of the article, I'll give some background on each choice provided, as well as the advantages for each, but feel free to skim over it and just respond to the poll.

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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.Cemper1003'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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Introduction

Visual Studio Code (VS Code) is a free source code editor made by Microsoft for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It provides built-in support for JavaScript, TypeScript, and Node.js. You can add extensions to provide support for numerous other languages including ObjectScript.

The InterSystems extensions enable you to use VS Code to connect to an InterSystems IRIS server and develop code in ObjectScript. The Visual Studio Code Documentation is an excellent resource on VS Code, so it is a good idea to be familiar with it.

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EDIT: This article has been updated with up-to-date information about the Port project, which now includes a tutorial for basic usage.

The Port project is something that I've introduced more than two years ago but I hadn't enough room to elaborate a tutorial on how to use it till now.


First, the motivation:

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Article
· Mar 4, 2022 4m read
How to become a time lord - Time travel

Time travel is like visiting Paris. You can't just read the guide, you have to throw yourself into it. Eat the food, use the wrong verbs, get double the charges, and end up kissing complete strangers.

The Doctor

We are now going to travel through time, that is, we are going to see future and past dates and how to calculate them in different formats. The TARDIS doesn't wait, take the controls and hold on tight.

Travel in TARDIS

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Hi Community,

In this article, we will explore the concepts of Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL within the context of InterSystems IRIS, provide practical examples, and examine their differences to help you understand how to leverage them in your applications.

InterSystems SQL provides a full set of standard relational features, including the ability to define table schema, execute queries, and define and execute stored procedures. You can execute InterSystems SQL interactively from the Management Portal or programmatically using a SQL shell interface. Embedded SQL enables you to embed SQL statements in your ObjectScript code, while Dynamic SQL enables you to execute dynamic SQL statements from ObjectScript at runtime. While static SQL queries offer predictable performance, dynamic and embedded SQL offer flexibility and integration, respectively.

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Hi developers!

Just want to share an old but always relevant best practice on namespaces changing @Dmitry Maslennikov shared with me (again).

Consider method:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

set ns=$namespace

zn "%SYS"

// try-catch in case there will be an error

try {

// do something, e.g. config change

}

catch {}

 zn ns    ; returning back to the namespace we came in the routine

return sc

}

And with new $namespace the method could be rewritten as:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

new $namespace

set $namespace="%SYS"

// do something

return sc

}

So! The difference is that we don't need to change the namespace manually as it will be back automatically once we return the method.

and we don't need try-catch (at least for this purpose) too.

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Article
· May 7, 2020 4m read
Unit Testing with ZPM

Hi Developers!

I want to share with you the approach you can use working with Unit Testing which I personally find very convenient and robust.

Will not talk much here about Unit Testing, we have documentation, enough good articles on the topic not only on the Internet but here on Developers Community too, e.g. this one.

How can you manage the Unit Testing of your ZPM module?

This is pretty handy with ZPM. It has a special command "test" which runs all the tests you mentioned in the module. You can execute it as shown below:

zpm:USER>module-name test

And this command runs all the tests you mentioned in module.xml.

Let's see how it works.

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*** archived ***

The question has come up several times and I saw mixed answers and no quick example

My personal preference is using CPIPE device as you get back exactly the output you will get at the command line interface of your OS .
The tricky thing is to stop reading in time.
The example just displays what you normally see in your console.
it becomes useful if you look for things that you can't get from any $system.whatever()

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It helps to remove special characters, such as non-utf-8 characters either control characters or unicode characters from text that is not printable or can't be parsed by downstream systems.

There is also $C(32) in this condition; sometimes NBSP appears in the text and it will not be recognized by TIE, but downstream it displays as "?".

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The invention and popularization of Large Language Models (such as OpenAI's GPT-4) has launched a wave of innovative solutions that can leverage large volumes of unstructured data that was impractical or even impossible to process manually until recently.

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Article
· Sep 11, 2024 9m read
Dates with InterSystems

Do not let the title of this article confuse you; we are not planning to take the InterSystems staff out to a fine Italian restaurant. Instead, this article will cover the principles of working with date and time data types in IRIS. When we use these data types, we should be aware of three different conversion issues:

  1. Converting between internal and ODBC formats.
  2. Converting between local time, UTC, and Posix time.
  3. Converting to and from various date display formats.

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This article will describe and include an example of how to embed an external PDF file into an HL7 segment, specifically ADT_A01:2.3.1 OBX(). This can be useful when attempting to insert pictures or other external data into an HL7 message. In this example, the name of the PDF file to be embedded is provided in the incoming HL7 message in OBX(1):ObservationValue field.

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In the previous article, I have demonstrated a simple way to record data changes. At this time I have changed the "Audit Abstract Class" which is responsible for recording audit data and the data structure where the audit log will be recorded.

I have changed the data structure to a parent and child structure where there will be two tables to record the "transaction" and the "fields its values" changed on that transaction.

Take a look at the new data model:

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Article
· Apr 26, 2024 3m read
Geo Vector Search #2

Technical surprises using VECTORs
>>> UPDATED

Building my tech. example provided me with a bunch of findings htt I want to share.
The first vectors I touched appeared with text analysis and more than 200 dimensions.
I have to confess that I feel well with Einstein's 4 dimensional world.
7 to 15 dimensions populating the String Theory are somewhat across the border.
But 200 and more is definitely far beyond my mathematical horizon.

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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
· Apr 27, 2017 7m read
Level up your XDATA

XDATA is used for a whole host of ISC libraries to store things like Zen pages, BPL logic and DTL transformations.

XDATA is the equivalent of XML config files of the JAVA world and JSON config files of the JavaScript / NPM world.

Whilst Atelier looks to shift source code to the disk, XDATA will remain a key component to source control our projects config / meta data.

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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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