This scenario showed up yesterday at a client site when I was delivering bespoke consultation on migration from Studio to VS Code.

I have recently started making more use of Docker Desktop on my Windows 11 workstation, particularly in conjunction with VS Code's Remote - Containers extension and the iris-python-template repo from @Guillaume Rongier

The InterSystems Server Manager extension for Visual Studio Code lets you define connections to your servers, list their namespaces and edit or view code there. You can also launch Portal for a server.

Server Manager 3.0 improves security by becoming a VS Code Authentication Provider. It is my entry for the November 2021 InterSystems Security Contest. Click here to visit the contest page where you may decide to vote for this entry. Please ignore the clickable "Contestant" label on this article header above, as it relates to a different contest for new DC articles. If you want to support me in that contest, simply "like" this post.

On a default VS Code installation, when you create a new file its language mode is 'Plain Text'

You have to click there to set another mode.

Luckily, there's a setting you can tweak to change this. It is called files.defaultLanguage

Set it to the ID of the language you want. Those IDs display in parentheses after each entry on the language mode selector.

When dealing with a support issue of one of our Deltanji source control sites this week I learned that if you're using InterSystems versions earlier than 2018.1 on Unix-type platforms it's possible that a class you export in UDL format will subsequently fail to import. So I'm posting this information here in case it helps other folk.

When defining a server connection in Atelier we are required to enter a username and password because these are mandatory fields in the dialog. However, if the /api/atelier web application definition on that server has only the "Unauthenticated" checkbox set in the section titled "Allowed Authentication Methods", then our Atelier connection will succeed even if we supply an invalid username and/or password.

When implementing our Deltanji source control product on Ensemble or HealthShare sites I sometimes encounter places that implement multiple production classes, e.g. one for their DEV environment and another for their LIVE one.

Here's one way to determine if a class is mapped (i.e. it is in a package whose definitions come from a database other than the default code database for the current namespace):

SAMPLES>w ##class(%Library.RoutineMgr).IsMapped("Cinema.Film.cls")
0
SAMPLES>w ##class(%Library.RoutineMgr).IsMapped("%iKnow.Objects.Source.cls")
1
SAMPLES>

If you pass a by-ref second argument to IsMapped you can also discover what database the class definition is stored in:

When posts are displayed on the DC homepage they only show the first part of each post. This part is known as the teaser, or the trimmed version. The DC software does its best, but without being given any hint by you it can sometimes produce teasers that are of limited value, e.g. "Hi!"

When composing your post, the Preview button lets you see what the teaser will look like. For example, here's the preview of an initial version of this post: