I am similar to Andrew in that I use PyCharm for my big projects as it helps manage multiple venvs for me.  Which means I don't install all the different packages I am playing with site-wide to avoid issues.  I am typically wrapping my Python into Docker, so this works well, and PyCharm also helps maintain/monitor my requirements.txt file in the venv, which then ensures that when I build the docker, I can pip install -r requirements.txt and know I have everything I need.

I use Notepad++ if all I want to do is a tiny script or just want to look at something I did, as PyCharm can take a while to open, so if I am not really writing code, it isn't worth opening up.

I am not using Jupyter notebooks for my "hacky" stuff and ML, as it makes it easy to have a couple of lines of code and print results.  So, if I am just testing something, or learning some new trick, it is really easy to iterate a line or two of code, or compare outputs, etc.

David, you are correct the command is actually docker volume create <name of volume>

You can then do docker volume ls to list your existing volumes, or docker volume purge to delete volumes that are no longer associated with a running container.

We should probably update this article a bit as the new Docker for Windows no longer supports AUFS, but the Overlay2 driver issues have been fixed.  So setting your driver to AUFS isn't needed anymore if you are running on the newest 2.0+ version.

I also tend to prefer using docker-compose for some of this so I can map out the volumes, a specific network, container names, etc that all help  you connect other containers to your IRIS, such as Zeppelin/Spark, a browser based IDE, or a Java app, etc.

Ponnumani,

To give you a more specific spot to start with InterSystems IRIS, I would look at either our QuickStarts, which are designed for you to use with our InterSystems Labs sandbox, or one of the cloud providers.  They assume you are a developer and want to do more of the work on your own.  You can also look at our  our Experiences, which provide a bit more guidance and also include fully configured InterSystems Labs that include the data, code, and even IDEs that you might need to get your hands on the technology.

Doug Foster

Manager, Online Education

Good news, we have updated the Direct Access to InterSystems IRIS container to include a terminal link in the management portal.

When you get launch your InterSystems IRIS instance, you will get a set of links to that instance.  Use the Management Portal link and log in with the username/password provided.

Then on the home page of the management portal, you will see a "Terminal" link in the "Links" section.  When you click on that link, you will need to enter the username/password again, but then will be in an interactive terminal session that defaults to the USER namespace.  This is the same as an iris session iris -U USER at the shell, or the "Terminal" menu option in the launcher.

Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or request as we want to make it easy to test out and learn InterSystem IRIS functionality.

Are you looking for full ssh/bash access into the container, or would an interactive InterSystems Terminal session? To run SQL shell or other database specific commands?

Full ssh is difficult as it opens up potential security issues.  The InterSystems Terminal would be possible.  We have a web accessible version that is in testing right now that we could add.

If you clarify what you are looking to do, we can see what meets the needs best.

Doug

Some of the examples developed for Windows came from me within the Learning Services team.  We map the key and password files in separately as we have to pull different key files for different product training.  We also rotate passwords and keys on a regular basis, so we found it was easier to have them living in their own directories on the local host so we can manage them better.

That said, you are correct that you can put them in one folder and only map it once.  The docker run commands get a bit complex, so we have moved to mostly using docker-compose and an .ENV file to help us parameterize different settings as we move containers from test (on a local Windows 10 machine) to staging  to production (on Linux).

We are currently working to convert the experience labs into online experiences.  The FHIR Experience will be ready in the next two weeks, closely followed by the Spark Experience.  We have additional details to work out for the Build Your Own Cloud experience as it runs by building in our InterSystems cloud and can consume a lot of resources, but we expect to get that worked out in the next 4 - 6 weeks.

Thanks Luca for the mention above, but it was a large team effort with several people from the Online Learning team as well as product manager, sales engineers, etc.

Stephen,

You have two options in the learning system to report any problems.

1. In the main learning system (learning.intersystems.com), that launches the courses, you can click the "Report Issue/Feedback" button.  This will automatically create a support ticket for the online learning team.  That page/tab should remain open in your browser when you launch a course.

2. You can e-mail us at onlinetraining@intersystems.com, which will also create a support ticket.

For either option, please include the course # or title of the course in question, and as much details as possible, and we will work to clarify any issues or content questions you might have.

Hopefully this helps,

Doug Foster - Manager, Online Learning

Duncan,

1) At this point we do not have an Ensemble Application Developer certification.  But you can take a look at the Learn Ensemble for Developers and System Integrators learning path, which contains links to some of our online training available for Ensemble.

2) Since we do not have a certification program, we do not have practice questions, but many of the interactive courses available in the learning path do have quiz questions to test your knowlege along the way.

We are continuing to evaluate our certification program and will be sure to post here in the community if we add any additional certifications.

Scott,

You can try the Error Handling in Ensemble video, it has a section on alerts and trapping errors in your Ensemble productions.  We are also working on a more detailed Building HL7 Productions learning path at this time and have more error handling and troubleshooting information in that.  I expect that to launch in the next few weeks and can post back here when it does, but it includes this same video.

Doug Foster - Manager Online Learning

You could just do a link to the search.  If you create the search that you want, such as "Newbie's Corner" and then copy the link, you can insert that one link. 

This is the link I produced: https://community.intersystems.com/search/all/%22NewBie%27s%20Corner%22

And you get the list of all of your newbie posts.  

That link will do a new search each time, so each time you add a new post it will be listed.  

Doug

Mike,

One thing you can look at is the "Learn Caché for Developers" resource guide that we just launched on the beta learning site. https://beta.learning.intersystems.com/course/view.php?id=4

It is set up to point you to a number of the different Caché resources.  That said, we are still working on it, so if you have some ideas for existing resources that should be included, or other types of guides and resources, please let me know and we can help pull them together.

Doug Foster - Manager, Online Learning