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Hi Devs!

For me, one of the most painful things about ObjectScript is ##class(Class).Method() typing to call a class method in code or in a terminal. I even submitted an idea to simplify it in ObjectScript.

But! There is a new feature in VSCode ObjectScript that was just introduced to the plugin - Copy Invocation!

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Hello fellow developers!

When developing with ObjectScript Package Manager, one crucial thing is the package version, which we place in the module.xml file. When we add changes to the package and are ready to publish a new version of the package in the registry, we also need to increase the version number. This is clear, but it is annoying, and we can often forget to do that.

This small article will help you to automate such a process.

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Hi Developers!

This is yet another short post that is intended to simplify developers' life. Now we'll talk about how to make GitHub run unit tests with every push to the repository by adding just one file to the repo. For free. On Github Cloud. Sounds great, isn't it?

It is possible and very easy to do. Credit goes to @Dmitry Maslennikov (and his repo), ZPM Package Manager, and GitHub Actions. Let's see how this all works!

Something for Nothing by Robert Sheckley - YouTube

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Hi developer folks!

Thanks to all of you who start the development with InterSystems IRIS from the basic development template!

Recently, thanks to @Dmitry.Maslennikov's contributions I've updated the Dockerfile to make the development simpler, images lighter and the building process faster. And it looks more beautiful too ;)

Here is what changed:

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Hey developers!

Sometimes we need to insert or refer to the data of classes directly in globals.

And maybe a lot of you expect that data structure of global with records is:

^Sample.Person(Id)=$listbuild("",col1,col2,...,coln).

And this article is a heads up, that this is not always true, don't expect it as granted!

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Hi developers!

As you probably noticed in IRIS 2021 the names of globals are random.

And if you create IRIS classes with DDL and want to be sure what global was created you probably would want to provide a name.

And indeed you can do it.

Use WITH %CLASSPARAMETER DEFAULTGLOBAL='^GLobalName' in CREATE Table to make it work. Documentation. See the example below:

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Hi folks!

Sometimes we need the docker image of the InterSystems IRIS solution we build to be published on some docker registry. The cases could be:

  1. Deploy it then in Kubernetes cluster
  2. Let your pal run the image of your public repo without building it locally.

You can push the image to Docker Hub Registry or Github Registry.

In this very short article, I provide a way how to do it automatically on every push to your GitHub repository.

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Hi developers!

ZPM Package Manager is getting more and more popular and thus the library of packages is growing.

And thus some solutions or samples can be built with InterSystems IRIS and one or two packages installed.

I want to share with you iris-docker-zpm-usage-template - a template that can be used exactly for this purpose.

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Hi folks!

Sometimes we need to import data into InterSystems IRIS from CSV. It can be done e.g. via csvgen tool that generates a class and imports all the data into it.

But what if you already have your own class and want to import data from CSV into your existing table?

There are numerous ways to do that but you can use csvgen (or csvgen-ui) again! I prepared and and example and happy to share. Here we go!

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Article
· Aug 13, 2021 4m read
Building Analytics Solution with IRIS

Hi developers!

How to build an analytics solution with InterSystems IRIS?

To begin with, let's agree on the points of what is the analytics solution - and this could be a very wide topic. Let's limit the set of solutions to those you can present in the Analytics contest.

There are three kinds of analytics solutions that we will review here: monitoring, interactive analytics, and reporting.

Monitoring

The typical monitoring solution consists of an online dashboard with KPIs that are being actively updated.

The key use case is of monitoring is to visually observe the KPI of fresh data every moment to react in case of an emergency.

Interactive Analytics

This solution supposes a set of interactive dashboards with filters and drill-downs.

The key use case is to explore the data with filters and drill-downs making business decisions upon graph and table data visualization.

Reporting

Reporting solution provides a set of static (usually) reports in a form of HTML or pdf documents that deliver the data in graph and text form in a predesigned form and could be sent via email.

The typical use case of a reporting system is to obtain reports on a given period that will illustrate the status of the product, process, service, sales, etc that is crucial for the business.

How InterSystems products could be used to build such solutions? Let's discuss this below!

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Hi developers!

Just want to share an old but always relevant best practice on namespaces changing @Dmitry Maslennikov shared with me (again).

Consider method:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

set ns=$namespace

zn "%SYS"

// try-catch in case there will be an error

try {

// do something, e.g. config change

}

catch {}

 zn ns    ; returning back to the namespace we came in the routine

return sc

}

And with new $namespace the method could be rewritten as:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

new $namespace

set $namespace="%SYS"

// do something

return sc

}

So! The difference is that we don't need to change the namespace manually as it will be back automatically once we return the method.

and we don't need try-catch (at least for this purpose) too.

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Hi folks!

Want to share a lifehack with you on ObjectScript highlighiting withing VSCode for script files.

Script files are just files with lines of ObjectScript that we feed anywhere, e.g. into IRIS during Docker baking procedure.

Typical usecase - here is the Scriptfile

here is the Dockerfile where we feed it.

And here is how it looks like usually in VSCode:

Screenshot 2021-08-05 at 09 51 06

Coudl be more beautiful, right?

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Article
· May 28, 2021 1m read
Fetch Upstream in GitHub

Hi colleagues!

Often when we collaborate to someone's repo in GitHub we do the following cycle:

Fork-Clone-Change-Commit-Push-Pull-Request-Merge to the original repo.

This is all great and works fine!

And if we want to make a second collaboration right after the merge you need to perform "Fetch upstream" to your forked repo first to "ingest" your own Pull-request in the original repo.

Geeky git-professionals do it with ease but this was always a headache for me so I usually simply deleted the fork and created a new one.

And today I figured that Github added a new UI feature that I can easily fetch-upstream for my fork with the original one and make it up to date and capable for pull-requests.

Here is where the button is:

This is a relief! )

Wanted to share this relief and productivity tip with you!

Bring more collaborations to Github repos!

And speaking of PR - I just made a PR with docker to Google Cloud Run deployment for the FHIRaaS demo made by @Anton Umnikov for the current FHIR Contest! Looking for more of your contributions!

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Hi folks!

Sometimes when we develop a mockup or PoC there is a need for a simple interface that will provide data in IRIS in JSON against SQL queries.

And recently I contributed a simple module that does exactly that:

accepts SQL string and returns the JSON.

How to install? Just call:

zpm "install sql-rest"

If you install it in a namespace X it will setup a /sql endpoint to your system that will accept POST requests with SQL string and will return the result for you for the data available in the namespace X.

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Hi developers!

Recently we announced the preview of Embedded Python technology in InterSystems IRIS.

Check the Sneak Peak video by @Bob Kuszewski.

Embedded python gives the option to load and run python code in the InterSystems IRIS server. You can either use library modules from Python pip, like numpy, pandas, etc, or you can write your own python modules in the form of standalone py files.

So once you are happy with the development phase of the IRIS Embedded Python solution there is another very important question of how the solution could be deployed.

One of the options you can consider is using the ZPM Package manager which is described in this article.

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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?

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