The Caché System Management Portal includes a robust web-based SQL query tool, but for some applications it’s more convenient to use a dedicated SQL client installed on a user’s PC.

SQuirreL SQL is a well known open source SQL client built in Java, which uses JDBC to connect to a DBMS. As such, we can configure SQuirreL to connect to Caché using the Caché JDBC driver.

The Art of Mapping Globals to Classes 1 of 3

Looking to breathe new life into an old MUMPS application? Follow these steps to map your existing globals to classes and expose all that beautiful data to Objects and SQL.

Introduction

In the first article in this series, we’ll take a look at the entity–attribute–value (EAV) model in relational databases to see how it’s used and what it’s good for. Then we'll compare the EAV model concepts to globals.

The newer dynamic SQL classes (%SQL.Statement and %StatementResult) perform better than %ResultSet, but I did not adopt them for some time because I had learned how to use %ResultSet. Finally, I made a cheat sheet, which I find useful when writing new code or rewriting old code. I thought other people might find it useful.

First, here is a somewhat more verbose adaptation of my cheat sheet:

Order is a necessity for everyone, but not everyone understands it in the same way
(Fausto Cercignani)

Disclaimer: This article uses Russian language and Cyrillic alphabet as examples, but is relevant for anyone who uses Caché in a non-English locale.
Please note that this article refers mostly to NLS collations, which are different than SQL collations. SQL collations (such as SQLUPPER, SQLSTRING, EXACT which means no collation, TRUNCATE, etc.) are actual functions that are explicitly applied to some values, and whose results are sometimes explicitly stored in the global subscripts. When stored in subscripts, these values would naturally follow the NLS collation in effect (“SQL and NLS Collations”).

A good writer is supposed to draw you in with the title and bury the answer somewhere in the article. I suppose this makes me a bad writer – don’t think less of me, my whole feeling of self-worth comes from the opinions of internet strangers!

End users sure love Excel tables. So, how can you deliver the second to the first? Read this post to find out.

The Art of Mapping Globals to Classes (2 of 3)

If you are looking to breathe new life into an old MUMPS application follow these steps to map your globals to classes and expose all that beautiful data to Objects and SQL.

This example is going to cram in 4 or 5 different things beyond what was covered in Part 1

The object and relational data models of the Caché database support three types of indexes, which are standard, bitmap, and bitslice. In addition to these three native types, developers can declare their own custom types of indexes and use them in any classes since version 2013.1. For example, iFind text indexes use that mechanism.

Sometimes, it comes in very handy (especially for the EAV model) to use array properties in a class and be able to qickly search by their elements: both the key and the value.

Let’s take a look at a simple example:

The Art of Mapping Globals to Classes (3 of 3)

If you are looking to breathe new life into an old MUMPS application follow these steps to map your globals to classes and expose all that beautiful data to Objects and SQL.

If the above does not sound familiar to you please start at the beginning with the following:

The Art of Mapping Globals 1

Overview

Encryption of sensitive data becomes more and more important for applications. For example patient names, SSN, address-data or credit card-numbers etc..

Cache supports different flavors of encryption. Block-level database encryption and data-element encryption. The block-level database encryption protects an entire database. The decryption/encryption is done when a block is written/read to or from the database and has very little impact on the performance.

With data-element encryption only certain data-fields are encrypted. Fields that contain sensitive data like patient data or credit-card numbers. Data-element encryption is also useful if a re-encryption is required periodically. With data-element encryption it is the responsibility of the application to encrypt/decrypt the data.

Both encryption methods leverage the managed key encryption infrastructure of Caché.

The following article describes a sample use-case where data-element encryption is used to encrypt person data.

But what if you have hundreds of thousands of records with an encrypted datafield and you have the need to search that field? Decryption of the field-values prior to the search is not an option. What about indices?

This article describes a possible solution and develops step-by-step a small example how you can use SQL and indices to search encrypted fields.

Hello,

We are sometimes asked for examples of how to do 3rd party SQL database selects/updates/inserts/stored procedures from an Ensemble SQL Business Operation.

In the attached file there are 4 sample Ensemble Operations that demonstrate four different types of transactions with an external SQL DB:

Last week, we announced the InterSystems IRIS Data Platform, our new and comprehensive platform for all your data endeavours, whether transactional, analytics or both. We've included many of the features our customers know and loved from Caché and Ensemble, but in this article we'll shed a little more light on one of the new capabilities of the platform: SQL Sharding, a powerful new feature in our scalability story.