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)

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).

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:

Caché offers a number of methods for going through a collection and doing something with its elements. The easiest method uses a while-loop and lets you fulfill the task in an imperative manner. The developer needs to take care of the iterator, jumping to the next element and checking if the loop is within the collection.

When there's a performance issue, whether for all users on the system or a single process, the shortest path to understanding the root cause is usually to understand what the processes in question are spending their time doing. Are they mostly using CPU to dutifully march through their algorithm (for better or worse); or are they mostly reading database blocks from disk; or mostly waiting for something else, like LOCKs, ECP or database block collisions?

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.

During my search for a snapshot of a persistent object,
I met a feature that I would like to share as it could be useful in some special situations.
My trigger was to have a before- and an after-image during unit testing.

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!

Hey Developers,

Are you ready to participate in the annual December competition?

Join the Advent of Code 2020 with InterSystems and participate in our ObjectScript contest to win some $$$ prizes!

Happy new year! I’m Raj Singh, InterSystems’ product manager for Developer Experience and I’d love your feedback on how you use IDEs today and your thoughts for the future.

Over the years, I have found myself needing to create multiple HL7 messages based on a single inbound message. Usually these take the form of an order or result from a lab. Each time I have approached it, I have tried to start from scratch under the belief that the previous attempt could have been done better.

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.

Using the IRIS native API for Node.JS was the opportunity to present
a MicroService operating in a Docker container.
A demo video is now also available to watch the demo in operation.

Hello Developer Community!

I’m pleased to announce the 0.9 release of the ObjectScript extension for Visual Studio Code. Earlier this year I announced that InterSystems would be joining the community in evolving this already popular tool. Since then, we have been hard at work solidifying the code base and building a slew of new features.