#Tips & Tricks

Hi folks!

Just a very short note on if you want to add a cute Open Exchange shield like this:

 in your GitHub repo you can do it by entering one line like this:

[![Gitter](https://img.shields.io/badge/Available%20on-Intersystems%20Open%20Exchange-00b2a9.svg)](https://openexchange.intersystems.com/package/csvgen)

In the URL place the path to your OEX page.

Thanks to the participants of contest for such a neat shield )

What other helpful Github shields do you know? Please share in the comments?

I have a case where our EMR is sending data, but not all the values needed for the Ancillary are valued properly and causes that message to error/halt processing on the Ancillary system, not ideal but its what they do. I would expect them to still process the message except that 1 field, but they don't.

I want to add validation to make sure certain fields are valued correctly for the Vendor. 

So I add some statements to take those items that don't pass this validation out to a batch file with headers.

I am currently evaluating Source Control systems that we can use for both MS SQL, MS Visual Studio, and InterSystems IRIS. For both MS SQL and MS Visual Studio we do have the option of either Azure or GitHub.  I understand when we upgrade to IRIS 2019.1 we have options for Source Control, and in previous Global Summit's I have heard GitHub discussed.  So why can't I user GitHub for both MS SQL/MS Visual Studio and IRIS?

A couple of questions come to mind starting to think about Source Control

Let's imagine you have to implement a method with a definition

/// Set value to %session.Data
ClassMethod setValue(params...) As %Status
{
}

How it should work

do ..setValue("key1", "val")

is equal to

set %session.Data("key1") = "val"

and 

do ..setValue("key1", "key2", "key3", "key4", "val")

is equal to 

This time I want to talk about something not specific to InterSystems IRIS, but that I think is important if you want to work with Docker and your server at work is a PC or laptop with Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise.

As you likely know, containers technology comes basically from Linux world and, nowadays, is on Linux hosts were it shows maximum potential. Those who use Windows on a normal basis see that both, Microsoft and Docker, have done important efforts during these last years that allow us to run containers based on Linux images on our Windows system in a really easy way... but it's something not supported for production systems and, this is the big problem, is not reliable if we want to keep persistent data outside of containers, in the host system,... mostly due to the big differences between Windows and Linux file systems. In the end, Docker for Windows itself uses a small linux virtual machine (MobiLinux) to run the containers... it does it transparently for the windows user... and it works perfectly well if, as I said, you don't require that your databases survive longer than the container...

Well,...let's get to the point,... the point is that many times, to avoid issues and simplify, we need a full Linux system and, if our server is based on Windows, the only way of having it is through a virtual machine. At least till WSL2 in Windows is released, but that will be another story and sure it'll take a bit of time to become robust enough.

In this article, I'll tell you, step by step, how to install an environment where you'll be able to work, if you need it, with Docker containers on an Ubuntu system in your Windows server. Let's go...

You might have encountered this and not known how to prevent it, or perhaps not even noticed it...

In this post I show strategies for backing up Caché using External Backup with examples of integrating with snapshot based solutions. The majority of solutions I see today are deployed on Linux on VMware so a lot of the post shows how solutions integrate VMware snapshot technology as examples.

InterSystems IRIS currently limits classes to 999 properties.

But what to do if you need to store more data per object?

This article would answer this question (with the additional cameo of Community Python Gateway and how you can transfer wide datasets into Python).

The answer is very simple actually - InterSystems IRIS currently limits classes to 999 properties, but not to 999 primitives. The property in InterSystems IRIS can be an object with 999 properties and so on - the limit can be easily disregarded.

This is a coding example working on Caché 2018.1.3 and IRIS 2020.2 
It will not be kept in sync with new versions 
It is also NOT serviced by InterSystems Support !

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

This is a coding example working on Caché 2018.1.3 and IRIS 2020.2 
It will not be kept in sync with new versions 
It is also NOT serviced by InterSystems Support !

It is also an example of a customized command extension (ZZJSN) in Caché / Ensemble & IRIS

This is the Caché version for fast JSON formatting. But iIt also works in IRIS .  
To allow parallel existence in IRIS with the previous example this is named ZZJSN

This is a coding example working on Caché 2018.1.3 and IRIS 2020.2 
It will not be kept in sync with new versions 
It is also NOT serviced by InterSystems Support !

Background

Device #2 named SPOOL dates back to the predecessors of Caché and IRIS
It was the first "%Stream" like option to buffer output before printing.
It is also the first and still today the most simple way of output redirection.

Wrap JSON to multi lines / Test ISJSON

   This is a coding example working on Caché 2018.1.3 and IRIS 2020.2
   It will not be kept in sync with new versions   
   It is also NOT serviced by InterSystems Support !

install and usage

Packed Pretty.xml installs routine ZPretty in any namespace.
calling $$Do^ZPretty(input,[filler],[newline]) returns a wrapped JSON string.
filler is the optional string for the indent, default = "  "
newline is optional, default = $C(13,10)
input accepts: JSON_String, JSON_Stream, %DynamicAbstractObject

Attention:

This is a coding example working on Caché 2018.1.3
It will not be kept in sync with new versions 
It is also NOT serviced by InterSystems Support !

Full backport from IRIS for Windows (x86-64) 2020.1 (Build 215U) Mon Mar 30 2020 20:14:33 EDT

IRIS brought us an excellent %JSON.Package
It is an essential component of the Project Manager (ZPM)
This backport makes it available also in Caché and builds a base to eventually backport also ZPM.