The Lo-Code Challenge

Imagine the scene. You are working happily at Widgets Direct, the internet's premier retailer of Widgets and Widget Accessories. Your boss has some devastating news, some customers might not be fully happy with their widgets, and we need a helpdesk application to track these complaints. To makes things interesting, he wants this with a very small code footprint and challenges you to deliver an application in less than 150 lines of code using InterSystems IRIS. Is this even possible?

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Article
· Mar 28, 2017 2m read
Map, Reduce and Filter Collections

Inspired by the article "Declarative development in Caché" that's still trending on the dev com. The OP explored a functional style of iterating over a collection. A comment today suggested "Caché would need syntax support for anonymous functions".

With Macros you can kind of get anonymous like syntax using dot notation.

This is not production code, but it does work. First the macros...

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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
· Jul 21, 2020 1m read
Snapshot to JSON

This is a sample to use %JSON.Adaptor class available in IRIS to produce a snapshot of your object.

The sample consists of 2 classes that are variations of what was known in Caché/SAMPLES as Sample.Person.
Be aware that the possibilities are limited by %JSON.Adapter and how you make use of it.

Once in place, you create some test data by Populate().
You select an object and take a snapshot.
You apply changes to your object and take another snapshot.
And see the difference.

BINGO!

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Article
· Mar 1, 2022 5m read
How to become a time lord - The birth

Good men don’t need rules.

The Doctor.

It's not an easy task to be a master of dates and times, it is always a problem and sometimes confusing in any programming language, we are going to clarify and put a few tips to make this task as simple as possible.

Get on the TARDIS and I'm going to turn you into a Time lord

Tardis

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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?

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Hi developers!

Suppose you have a Github repository with ObjectScript classes but without a Docker environment.

Recently I published a repository with a set of files that form a universal Docker and VSCode environment to let you either import and run your repository in InterSystems IRIS Community Edition on Docker or turn your repository into Docker and VSCode environment for InterSystems IRIS Community Edition.

So in one sentence:

Unpack these files in your folder and you have the Docker and VSCode environment for your InterSystems IRIS ObjectScript application!

See the details below.

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Hi, developers!

Currently, I'm working on a project that requires highly dynamic event management. In the context of the Java programming language, my first instinct should be to opt for the "Observer Pattern", which is an approach to managing interactions between objects by establishing a notification mechanism. It allows multiple observers to react to changes in the state of a subject autonomously, promoting code flexibility and modularity. If you are not familiar with this design pattern, check out Wikipedia to find more information about it.


While it's natural and commonly used in certain programming languages as Java and C++, in ObjectScript, it's quite a different story.

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This is a translation of the following article. Thanks [@Evgeny Shvarov] for the help in translation.

This post is also available on Habrahabrru.

The post was inspired by this Habrahabr article: Interval-associative arrayru→en.

Since the original implementation relies on Python slices, the Caché public may find the following article useful: Everything you wanted to know about slicesru→en.

Note: Please note that the exact functional equivalent of Python slices has never been implemented in Caché, since this functionality has never been required.

And, of course, some theory: Interval treeru→en.

All right, let’s cut to the chase and take a look at some examples.

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Article
· Jun 13, 2016 1m read
Debug: using locks for breakpoints

Hi, Community!

Want to share with you one debugging approach from the Russian forum.

Suppose I want to debug the application and I want it to stop the execution on a particular line.

I add in code this line:

l +d,-d

When I want to start debugging in this line I block d in terminal

USER> l +d

And execute the app.

The app stops on this line and lets me connect to it with Studio debugger.

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Hi guys!

Was coding today with InterSystems IRIS in a docker container and decided to share with you the commands you may find useful in everyday coding.

# docker-compose build

command to build a container. Remember, it is useful if you have dockerfile in the repo.

if the build is successful call the following to launch it:

# docker-compose up -d

Find IRIS management portal on:

localhost:port/csp/sys/%25CSP.Portal.Home.zen?$NAMESPACE=%25SYS

where the port is what you set in docker-compose.yml - 52775 in this case.

Run the following if you want to launch a terminal session inside IRIS container:

# docker-compose iris iris session iris

gfhj gj 


sdfdsfsdf





USER>

And run the following to shut down the container:

# docker-compose down

Troubleshooting

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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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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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Hello!

Link: https://demo.cachequality.com

In this presentation, developer oriented, we will cover this tool, how it works, how you can use it/administer it, etc. Duration 30 minutes.

The topics will include:

  • a short presentation of Caché Quality and SonarQube (which this plugin uses),
  • a demonstration of the rules and how to tailor them to your need.

Questions will be more than welcome! Hope to see you there!

And a big thanks to Evgeny Shvarov who made this possible!

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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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Article
· Sep 27, 2018 2m read
Method to Create a Class

The following class method "test" contains code that can create a new class, create new properties for classes, or create new methods for classes. "test" runs all three of these processes once, and the code that performs each action is labelled by comments in the method:


ClassMethod test() As %Status
{
    set sc = $$$OK
    
    // Create a class
    set class = ##class(%ClassDefinition).%New("MyClass")
    set class.Description = "This is my test class"_$c(13,10)_"testing %ClassDefinition"
    set class.Super = "%Persistent"

    // Create a property and add it
    set property = ##class(%PropertyDefinition).%New("MyClass.MyProperty")
    set property.Type = "%String"
    set property.Description="This is a property"
    set sc1 = class.Properties.Insert(property)
    do:$$$ISERR(sc1) $system.Status.DisplayError(sc1)
    set sc = $$$ADDSC(sc, sc1)
    
    // Create a method and add it
    set method = ##class(%MethodDefinition).%New("MyClass.MyMethod")
    set method.ReturnType = "%Integer"
    set method.FormalSpec = "x:%Integer,y:%Integer=10"
    set method.Description = "Return product of x and y"
    set method.CodeMode = "code"
    set method.Code = " new result"_$c(13,10)_" set result=x*y"_$c(13,10)_" quit result"
    set sc2 = class.Methods.Insert(method)
    do:$$$ISERR(sc2) $system.Status.DisplayError(sc2)
    set sc = $$$ADDSC(sc, sc2)
    
    // Save the class definition
    set sc3 = class.%Save()
    do:$$$ISERR(sc3) $system.Status.DisplayError(sc3)
    set sc = $$$ADDSC(sc, sc3)
    
    return sc
}

Here's a link to the code on GitHub

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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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Hi Devs!

For me, one of the most painful things about ObjectScript is ##class(Class).Method() typing to call a class method in code or in a terminal. I even submitted an idea to simplify it in ObjectScript.

But! There is a new feature in VSCode ObjectScript that was just introduced to the plugin - Copy Invocation!

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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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