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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There are many ways to generate excel files using Intersystems, some of them are ZEN reports, IRIS reports ( Logi reports or formally known as JReports), or we can use third party Java libraries, the possibilities are almost endless.

But, what if you want to create a simple spreadsheet with only Caché ObjectScript? (no third party applications)

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Importance and Collection of Exact Version Information ($zv / $zversion)
The explanation of:
- why collecting $zv is important (The WHY),
- what the components of $zv mean (The WHAT),
- and how to collect $zv (The HOW).
(The Ultimate $zv Guide to the ISC Galaxy in large, friendly letters)
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With the advent of Embedded Python, a myriad of use cases are now possible from within IRIS directly using Python libraries for more complex operations. One such operation is the use of natural language processing tools such as textual similarity comparison.

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Article
· Jul 16, 2024 6m read
Method or Class Method?

For programmers new to ObjectScript, one question will inevitably arise: “What is the difference between methods and class methods?” A typical answer would be: “A class method applies to a class, but a method applies to an instance of that class.” While that answer is correct, it lacks important information on how these methods di

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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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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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Article
· Mar 17, 2021 3m read
Making the most of $Query

I ran into an interesting ObjectScript use case today with a general solution that I wanted to share.

Use case:

I have a JSON array (specifically, in my case, an array of issues from Jira) that I want to aggregate over a few fields - say, category, priority, and issue type. I then want to flatten the aggregates into a simple list with the total for each of the groups. Of course, for the aggregation, it makes sense to use a local array in the form:

agg(category, priority, type) = total

Such that for each record in the input array I can just:

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Article
· Feb 16, 2018 2m read
Adopted Bitmap

The base class Bmap.Person defines persons within an organization distributed
by various countries. All records are indexed by (Country, PersonalId).
this structure doesn't allow use of bitmaps.

So a wrapper class Bmap.PersonQ around the data eliminates the top level of
the index (Country) and isolates the PersonalId (%Integer, MINVAL=1).
We are ready to use a Bitmap index.

A few performance figures on 300010 generated records.
You see that Relative Cost are sometimes quite misleading.

base

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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
· 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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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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Article
· Feb 8, 2019 2m read
Client Websockets based CSP

The Caché / Ensemble standard distribution contains in namespace SAMPLES
a nice example of a CSP page consuming WebService as a Client.
I have modified it not only to display the replies but to feed them back into a Global.
I used the classic Hyperevent to achieve this. The replies end up as a log in global^WSREPLY.
When there is no input anymore the page closes and goes away.

There are 2 versions with visible and hidden display during operation.
dc.WSCSP.reverseVerbose.cls and dc.WSCSP.reverseHidden.cls

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Article
· Sep 26, 2023 1m read
Create JSON Objects and Arrays by SQL

The related package avoids adding %JSONAdaptor to each class but uses instead
SQL functions JSON_OBJECT() to create my JSON objects. With this approach, you can
add JSON to any class - even deployed ones - without any need for change or recompiling.

The trigger was the Export of M:N relationships as JSON objects or arrays.

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Introduction

As AI-driven automation becomes an essential part of modern information systems, integrating AI capabilities into existing platforms should be seamless and efficient. The IRIS Agent project showcases how generative AI can work effortlessly with InterSystems IRIS, leveraging its powerful interoperability framework—without the need to learn Python or build separate AI workflows from scratch.

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Article
· Aug 21, 2019 2m read
ToolBox-4-Iris

Hello everyone,
After some work with IRIS we want to share our ToolBox-4-Iris with you.

What is this about?

The ToolBox-4-Iris is an API for IRIS with a collection of handy and useful tools - features that are not available in IRIS, but greatly simplify application development. To save time and effort on the "typical tools" that every developer needs. This includes additional classes, individual methods or even more efficient macros, which are described in the respective packages.

Content

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It is with great pleasure that the CIUSSS de l'Estrie - CHUS is sharing the mocking framework it developed and presented at the InterSystems Summit 2017. I will update this post with more detailed instructions in the next few weeks but I wanted to share the code and presentation quickly :

https://gitlab.com/ciussse-drit-srd-public/Mocking-Framework

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Article
· May 30, 2022 3m read
ObjectScript Syntax For GitLab

Hi Community,

Recently, I migrated a series of Objectscript repositories from XML to UDL format.
After the migration, I was a bit disappointed by the presentation on the GitLab web interface.

Since Objectscript syntax is supported by GitHub, I thought It would be also supported by GitLab. Unfortunately, the library used by GitLab to highlight the code does not have an extension to support Objectscript.

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Suppose you have an application that allows users to write posts and comment on them. (Wait... that sounds familiar...)

For a given user, you want to be able to list all of the published posts with which that user has interacted - that is, either authored or commented on. How do you make this as fast as possible?

Here's what our %Persistent class definitions might look like as a starting point (storage definitions are important, but omitted for brevity):

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