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Dmitry Maslennikov · Sep 14, 2022

Yeah, I know, It's not going to be a popular idea, but, forget about ObjectScript.

You can still do any projects with IRIS, but try to implement it in any different supported language. Python is the latest trend, select any project and try to implement it. Do not use Embedded Python, you will still be stuck with ObjectScript. Use DB-API for instance, probably in Django with my Django driver, or find another way.

Nodejs, I've published a few projects on it already, with my own driver as well. the latest project for the contest it's a NodeJS based application, where I added support for IRIS.

I've also had projects on Golang, and Rust languages.

InterSystems also supports Java and .Net, you may try to use the.

ObjectScript as a language is quite simple and limited, when you will use other languages, you will get wider knowledge about programming, when much stuff possible to do simpler than with ObjectScript. Applications are not only about fast access to the data, it's running the application itself too. And in some cases, it could much faster development to it with other languages than with ObjectScript.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Sep 1, 2022

Background tasks are an internal feature mostly for System Management Portal, and in most cases also not supposed to be called by you.

JOB, is a complete different story. with this command, you have control over many aspects of how to run this process in the background. 

You can check $Test, (be careful, and do right after JOB) which says if your process even started in the background

$ZChild returns that job ID, you can check it in SMP if it's running

$Data(^$JOB(child)) will say if your child process is still alive.

You may have up to 25 (can be less) background jobs per process. So, store the child process ID after each call of JOB command

You may redirect output from that process to some file, by passing principal-output parameter

With ^$JOB and $ZChild, you at least can wait until the process is finished its work. With an endless loop and reasonable HANG 

Dmitry Maslennikov · Aug 29, 2022

So, it looks like you doing it a wrong way. 

If you need to build your application, then you have to do it with Dockerfile during the build stage, not when it is just up and running. And you still build some container before it.

In any case you may use this way, to wait until it's started

sleep 5; docker exec $CONTAINER /usr/irissys/dev/Cloud/ICM/waitISC.sh

Teah, not documented, internally used script, but nothing offered instead.

Contact me directly, I may help to review the build process, and give particular recommendations.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Aug 28, 2022

Nowadays I would not recommend plain CSP files at all, and for sure, and totally no ZEN. 

I see that you use Python in some cases, I may recommend you use Django in that case, I wrote a few articles about it recently.

Or just do REST with %CSP.REST class, and do plain web application on plain HTML and JS, or may use ReactDOM (my application as an example).

Dmitry Maslennikov · Aug 23, 2022

If to be honest, I have no idea, of the reasons for appearing SAM in the way it appeared. SAM is a bunch of tools.

  • Grafana, AlertManager - Visualization, and alerting
  • Prometheus - Time-Series Database, which in fact do requests to IRIS to collect metrcis
  • SAM itself, is from what I got, is just an UI tool which helps kind of organize your cluster and configure Prometheus+Grafana. And it uses the whole IRIS just for it.

And in fact SAM is not a requirement for it all. The thing is on your servers, where you have couple of API endpoints for Prometheus. And As far as I remember, the code there is closed, and you can't extend it. But you can easily add, your own endpoints, with your custom metrics, in understandable by Prometheus format. Look a this article as an example

So, any new metrics are supposed to be added in your servers, not in SAM.

And there is another way. Last year I developed a plugin to Grafana itself, which can connect directly to IRIS by its super port, and collect data in any way. So, even like, just without Prometheus at all, just Grafana and IRIS. It's possible to move some metrics logic outside of IRIS. Something like, use SQL query as a metric, or read some global, and visualize it in Grafana. That plugin is just a proof of concept, and can't be used in production. It requires some work on it, but I did not see so much interest in it, yet. And I would really like to improve it and make it useful.

Dmitry Maslennikov · Aug 23, 2022

And in fact, I've asked about this particular task at Global Summit 2022. And I'm really interested if any of the companies have this request too? Nowadays, there are a lot of such tools for many programming languages but ObjectScript. And in some cases it could become a requirement, to scan your application, no matter the language it's written.

I hope, that maybe someone from InterSystems may add something. Pinging @Andreas Dieckow 

Dmitry Maslennikov · Aug 23, 2022

Not sure why would you need to connect SAM container directly, but ok.

As Robert, already mentioned, to open terminal inside the container, you can do this command

docker exec -it {conatiner_id} bash

-i for interactive, -t for tty

-u root, if you would need to get root access, not needed in most of the cases.

bash is for command which you need to execute, so, it can be just

docker exec -it {conatiner_id} iris session IRIS

where the first iris is a command, session command there and last IRIS is an instance name (by default in docker container)

The next question is how to connect with VSCode. So, first of all, it should be connected over internal WebServer, or another way you managed to configure for access web. So, container have to be started with mapped port 52773

You may get authorization issues with a freshly started container, while it may require you to change the password. VSCode requires authorization. So, just simple config should work

{
  "objectscript.conn": {
    "active": true,
    "port": 52773,
    "host":"localhost",
    "username": "_system",
    "password": "SYS",
    "ns": "%SYS",
  }
}