I understand this is a rather broad topic (and at times involves religious sentiments) yet I would like to look at it from the Caché perspective:

• Do you use an issue tracking / collaboration system? If so which one. Any you would recommend or immediately dismiss based on personal experience?
• How do you keep track of large code bases? Thousdands of folders named backup1, backups2, ..., SVN, git?
• Do you have a development server to which you commit and test features there, or do you rather run a local copy of caché and implement features locally first, then push to the server?
• Bonus

In this article I would like to tell you about macros in InterSystems Caché. A macro is a symbolic name that is replaced with a set of instructions during compilation. A macro can “unfold” in various instruction sets each time it is called, depending on the parameters passed to it and activated scenarios. This can be both static code and the result of ObjectScript execution. Let's take a look at how you can use them in your application.

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.

 But is it really what a developer should be concerned with?!A developer should be working on solving the problem at hand – quickly and producing code of the highest quality.

When working at a terminal prompt the %SS routine lets me see what's running on the instance:

USER>d ^%SS

But sometimes I'm only interested in knowing what's running in my namespace. In which case, here's what I use:

USER>d THIS^%SS

Recently I was conducting a remote support session with a site. The desktop they were sharing with me was on a PC configured with German as the native language. Since my German is rather rusty, and virtually non-existent when it comes to computing terms, I was glad to be able to switch the Portal session into English.

This is done from the page that appears when you use the About link:

All I needed to remember was that the About link is the second one, and the language selection dropdown is at the foot of that page.

Hi All

I'm looking for some field experiences, lessons learned, or actual deployed solutions to the problem of replicating non-CACHE.DAT data in a mirrored Cache environment.  

Environment:

• Operating System is IBM AIX
• Hardware is IBM Power w/ virtualised storage
• Cache 2017.1
• 2x Production mirror members
• 1x DR mirror member

There are a number of different data types that we're looking at mirroring, and a number of identified solutions.  The two main types of data to be mirrored outside of Cache mirroring are:

• CSP  files underneath database directories
• 'File Drop' directories, monitored

Prompted by this post about accessing a global at its original location after you have changed a mapping, here's a tip about one specific dropdown in Portal that's sometimes useful.

If your application is raising <PROTECT> errors and you're finding it hard to work out why, here's a way to get additional information.

First, if auditing is not already enabled, turn it on:

Then use "Configure System Events" (highlighted above) and locate the event named %System/%Security/Protect. In the screenshot below I used the Filter field to do this (type "protect" - highlighted below - and press TAB):

Notice that the Enabled column shows a value "No".By default <PROTECT> errors are not logged in the audit.

I only recently noticed the presence of a local database named CACHE alongside the more familiar CACHESYS, CACHELIB, CACHETEMP and CACHEAUDIT.

A bit of digging through the documentation archive led me to conclude that the CACHE database arrived in 2010.2, where the release notes say:

Note the lack of an accent on the words I have highlighted.

The above documentation is incorrect when it says "this database is mounted as read-only".In fact it is mounted RW.But the %DB_CACHE security resource that controls access to it only grants R as its public permission.

 It's almost time to get your customers upgraded to new versions - are you worried about showing off your SQL Performance after upgrades?  If you want to upgrade without worrying, then I have just the program for you!!!  Check out this video from Global Summit 2016 featuring yours truly explaining how to upgrade a system without worrying about pesky SQL queries showing on your waistline!  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfFPYfIoR_g

Unfortunately the video started after the Frozen Musical Sing-a-long, but it's 30 minutes of the most fun you'll have while learning tools and tips for Caché SQL!

Que

Prior to 2017.1, whenever I created a new namespace using Portal on Ensemble or HealthShare it was automatically configured to host productions. This used to irritate me, because sometimes I'm setting up a namespace (for example, to host our Deltanji tool) that doesn't need the extra Ensemble baggage.

Sometimes I observe people scrolling manually down to the bottom of the Console Log document when they want to see the most recent messages. So I want to draw attention to the handy link that does the job for you in a single click:

If you deal with multiple instances of Caché / Ensemble / HealthShare and sometimes have to work at the Terminal command prompt, did you know that you can easily add extra information to that prompt which may help prevent you running a command on the wrong instance?

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...

#Define foreach(%c,%l) for i=1:1:%c.Size set %l=%c.GetAt(i) do
#Define map(%oc,%nc,%l) set %nc=##class(%ListOfDataTypes).%New() for i=1:1:%oc.Size set %l=%oc.GetAt(i) do  do %nc.Insert(fpl8349312378)
#Define

Hi Community,

This article assumes that you are familiar with Zabbix and SNMP monitoring, if not, there are some very interesting posts on the Community, especially this one (https://community.intersystems.com/post/creating-custom-snmp-oids) which contains a lot of information on how to configure and request an SNMP Cache server.  

With Cache, all MIB data objects are organized into tables, so you need to know the index of an object to be able to get its value.

In case you've never used the "About" link at the top of Management Portal, here's a screenshot of the kind of information it shows. I've highlighted the link and some of the information I find it handy to get from here.

A feature I recently used in working on ISC internal applications is the ability to send emails on behalf of someone. This is useful when generating system notifications from an application when you want some of them to show up as being from a specific person, perhaps posting comments on a work ticket.

In my case I was updating our facilities work order system for tracking requests. Normally all notification emails are sent from the same noreply email address. I wanted to change that so comments added from the original requester would show up as being from them and stand out. 

If you're using

By default, Analyzer executes queries as components are added. Often, there are times where you may know exactly what you are looking to do, and you do not want Analyzer to execute 5 queries as you drag and drop items onto rows/columns and select your filters. This is where toggling Auto-execute off can help.

As more people join Developer Community, and with increasing efforts to promote code sharing, I'd like to draw fresh attention to this post I wrote a year ago. It spotlights a feature within the class compiler which is both useful and dangerous. When importing code (e.g. from an XML export of classes received from someone), it's worth considering the risks.

Even if that post doesn't seem relevant to you at the moment you may wish to note it for the future. A handy way of doing this is to click the star icon at the end of it.

Amongst the large fonts and chunky icons of Portal's pages, the Menu button in the top left corner is easily overlooked:

When clicked, it often produces the following menu:

When I remember it's there, I find the "View Console Log" option particularly handy.

I wrote "often" above because I've also noticed that the Menu contents change when I'm on a page within the Ensemble section of Portal:

Maybe the contents are context-sensitive elsewhere too and I just haven't noticed yet.

Until recently I didn't pay much attention to Portal's home page:

If it's not showing when you initially launch Portal you can easily jump to it using the button / tab at the top of the left-hand column of options. And later during your session, get there via the Home link that will be visible at the top of every page.

On the Home page the "Recent" section is automatically maintained for you.

To use the "Favorites" section you need to tag your favorite pages. Suppose I want to add the production monitor page as a favorite. Here's how:

1. Navigate the menu to find the link for the page you want.

2.

User interfaces such as Portal often give us multiple ways of doing a task. Sometimes we stick with habits and don't realize that another way might save us time.

Here's one that I learned by watching someone else using Portal.

Use the Search box to get quickly to a page that may otherwise be several layers deep in the Portal hierarchy. For example, suppose I want to check the status of the ECP networking:

Clicking on a match doesn't take me direct to the page (or am I missing a trick here?). Instead it gives me this:

And now a click takes me to the page I want.

This is the second part of my long post about package managers in operating systems and language distributions. Now, hopefully, we have managed to convince you that convenient package manager and rich 3^rd party code repository is one key factor in establishing of a vibrant and fast growing ecosystem. (Another possible reason for ecosystem success is the consistent language design, but it will be topic for another day.)

In this second part we plan to discuss the practical aspects of creating a package manager in general and their projection to the Caché database environment.

Let assume we want

I was benchmarking the populate utils when I noticed something strange. Consider this simple benchmarking method:

ClassMethod runBench(count As %Integer = 300000)
{
		s types=["name","ssn","company","title","phone","city","street","zip","mission","state","color","product","string","integer","float"]
		//s types=["name","ssn"]
		s iter=types.%GetIterator()
		while iter.%GetNext(.key,.value){
			s start=$P($ZTS,",",2)
			s opt={}
			s opt.type=value
			for i=1:1:count{
				s res=##class(DataGen.Generator).genVal(opt)			}
			s end=$P($ZTS,",",2)
			s total=end-start
		    w value_$C(9)_" total

Recently I wrote about automatic removal of system methods from the codebase.

Today, I'm ready to present you a working solution (codename: SMR) for this task.

Index

This is a list of all the posts in the Data Platforms’ capacity planning and performance series in order. Also a general list of my other posts. I will update as new posts in the series are added.

You will notice that I wrote some posts before IRIS was released and refer to Caché. I will revisit the posts over time, but in the meantime, Generally, the advice for configuration is the same for Caché and IRIS. Some command names may have changed; the most obvious example is that anywhere you see the ^pButtons command, you can replace it with ^SystemPerformance.

While some posts are updated to preserve links, others will be marked as strikethrough to indicate that the post is legacy. Generally, I will say, "See: some other post" if it is appropriate.

Capacity Planning and Performance Series

Generally, posts build on previous ones, but you can also just dive into subjects that look interesting.

• Part 1 - Getting started on the Journey, collecting metrics.
• Part 2 - Looking at the metrics we collected.
• Part 3 - Focus on CPU.
• Part 4 - Looking at memory.
• Part 5 - Monitoring with SNMP.
• Part 6 - Caché storage IO profile.
• Part 7 - ECP for performance, scalability and availability.
• Part 8 - Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Capacity and Performance Planning
• Part 9 - Caché VMware Best Practice Guide
• Part 10 - VM Backups and IRIS freeze/thaw scripts
• Part 11 - Virtualizing large databases - VMware cpu capacity planning

I tried to make atelier look more like XCODE with this simple trick or tip: change the default font to SF Mono and size 14.

To do it I did:

1) Install SF Mono font in the system which is the default font for XCODE and needs to be installed in order to use it.

You can find it in: /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/Fonts

Double Click SFMono-Regular.otf file and install it. You will get a warning of "serious problems" but it will work all right.

2) Then, in Atelier, go to Preferences / General / Appearance / Color and Fonts The choose Text Font (In Basics category) and Edit...

What is a core file? and When are they use­ful?