#Development Environment

I'm excited to let you know that we at George James Software have released some new VS Code training courses. Following the success of our Basics course we have expanded our offering to help InterSystems users looking to move to VS Code improve their knowledge. Here's what's on offer...Studio to VS Code Migration - The Basics (2.5 hours)An interactive training webinar for those who have never used VS Code before and want hands-on help in getting set up and explaining the basics of how it works.Upcoming dates: Wed, April 17th + Wed, May 15thPrice: $450 / £450 / €450 per personVS Code for

Hi VSCode users!

Just want to check with you, is this settings.json file ideal enough if I:

1. Want VSCode to connect to IRIS in docker?

2. Want to use VSCode SQL Tool?

The connection settings file:

Visual Studio Code releases new updates every month with new features and bug fixes, and the February 2024 release is now available. 

Version 1.87 includes: 

I recently realized it's been far too long since I talked about the latest features in the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension for Visual Studio Code. 

I'm pleased to announce version 2.12.1 of the ObjectScript extension, containing a number of enhancements that make a developer's life easier. Some highlights are described below, including the #1 requested feature from Global Summit -- XML import! 

As always, find the full list of modifications in the CHANGELOG, including many bug and vulnerability fixes.

Cleaner user interface

Hi Devs!

Recently I was impressed by @Dan Pasco's article where he shares also how he uses terminal aliases. 

Terminal aliases is a very powerful tool for developers and sys admins if you often need to call some cumbersome terminal expressions and make it shorter and cleaner. Here is the documentation.
Yes! 

But what about Docker environments? What if you are fan of Docker dev environments but also want to keep using your favorite aliases with Docker as well?

Turned out it is very possible.

Hi folks!

Sometimes building an images via docker-compose.yml can take significant time.

And often after a minute or two of waiting it turns out that ports listed in docker-compose are busy and you need to start building process again with different ports or to turn down processes that took it.

Is there a way to check ports listed in docker-compose BEFORE starting the image baking process?

How do you deal with this problem?

Does anyone have an effective tool for anonymizing/deidentifying CCDAs for testing purposes?

While starting the development with IRIS we have a distribution kit or in case of Docker we are pulling the docker image and then often we need to initialize it and setup the development environment. We might need to create databases, namespaces, turn on/off some services, create resources. We often need to import code and data into IRIS instance and run some custom code to init the solution.

As first announced in May, and after many presentations and robust discussions at Global Summit 2023, we are continuing with the plans to deprecate InterSystems Studio (deprecated designates a feature or technology that InterSystems no longer actively develops, and for which better options exist).

When you use VS Code to edit source code, the settings model allows you to specify folder-specific values for some settings by using a settings.json file located in a .vscode sub-folder of the workspace root folder. A value set here takes precedence over one from your personal settings when you are working within that workspace root folder.

Are you preparing to use VS code for the first time? Just make sure you have enough privileges.

Have you defined your Iris server in your VS Code settings, and still get the following error?

VS Code accesses Iris/HealthConnect using the web application /api/atelier. If you do not have permission (i.e. you are using an LDAP user to connect and the web application is not configured to support LDAP), this is the reason why you couldn't connect.

For several years now Visual Studio Code has supported the notebook coding paradigm with a maturing UX and an API that is enabling a notebook extensions ecosystem to grow. One of the best-known notebook platforms is Jupyter Notebooks. A Microsoft team publishes an extension that allows VS Code to handle .ipynb notebook files. These can either work against a local Python environment or connect to a Jupyter Server, which typically hosts remote Python environments with beefier resources.

I have a problem. Occasionally, I am getting locked out of IRIS because of password failures. However, the failures aren't necessarily related to my password.  We are using VSCode, and I have installed one or two proposed APIs for use with the software (because that's just how I am; I want to learn the new stuff).

Today, I had that problem again. The step that caused the problem was most likely when I was trying to switch the branch I was using and updating within VSCode. Let's say I was switching from branch "1A" to branch "2B". When I did this, IRIS caught two password errors:

In the discussions at https://community.intersystems.com/post/intersystems-studio-deprecated-starting-20232 one notable topic has been that some Studio users make regular use of its facilities for exporting multiple code artifacts (e.g. classes and routines) into a single XML file on the workstation, then exporting that file into a different server namespace.

Unless / until equivalent features are added to the VS Code ObjectScript extension, can these people fill the gap by using the System Explorer section of Management Portal?

Exciting news for developers using GitLab for their InterSystems applications repositories! Open Exchange has expanded its support to include GitLab, allowing you to submit your projects just as easily as you would do with GitHub repos. 

Submitting Your GitLab Repo app on Open Exchange:

Hi devs!

How one can understand the classnames of request and response messages of a given operation?

E.g. when I build the data transformation, how do I know which message will come to the operation?

Good day,

Is there a way to change the theme in management portal? or at least the color of the header.

Issue is, some users have access to Development and Testing and Production environments. I would like a way to color-differentiate the environments to reduce the errors. 

NOTE:  This content was originally presented at the InterSystems Global Summit in 2014, however related topics often come up on the Developer Community so I have decided to turn this into an article for easier reference and discussion.  However, much of the content was pulled directly from the presentation slides so the article format resembles that of a PPT deck more than paragraphs.

Introduction

Teams that deal with many environments (e.g. for development, testing and production) multiplied by many systems (e.g. billing app, hr app, support app) can face a number of changes:

Are you all ready for something you wish you knew ages ago (or, in my case, a DECADE ago)?  Open up a portal in your favorite instance and go to:

System Administration->Configuration->Additional Settings->Startup

Scroll down to "Terminal Prompt" and click 'Edit'.  This allows you to edit what you see on your terminal prompt.  You can change that to my current setting: 8,3,2

What does this do?  It adds your instance name for your prompt.  So now your prompt can look like:

DEVELOPMENT:USER>

Hi there,

Please, could anyone tell me how can I set up VSCode terminal to IRIS terminal? I already saw this working in a video with docker version from IRIS Community. I have the Intersystems Extension Pack and IRIS Community locally installed.

Thanks

I'm pleased to announce version 2.6.0 of the VS Code ObjectScript extension, containing a number of enhancements that make a developer's life easier. Some highlights are described below. As always, find the full list of modifications in the CHANGELOG, including many bug and vulnerability fixes.

Switch namespaces quickly

Thanks to @Olli Tanskanen at partner company JediSoft Oy for this enhancement! You can now switch namespaces from the Server Actions menu (when using client-side folders only).

Fast, asynchronous server-side search

A question for anyone using InterSystems technology:

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced either trying to hire developers that know ObjectScript, or trying to train developers on ObjectScript?

Hi Community!

I think everyone keeps the source code of the project in the repository nowadays: Github, GitLab, bitbucket, etc. Same for InterSystems IRIS projects  check any on Open Exchange.

What do we do every time when start or continue working with a certain repository with InterSystems Data Platform?

We need a local InterSystems IRIS machine, have the environment for the project set up and the source code imported.

So every developer performs the following:

Hi Developers!

As you know InterSystems IRIS Interoperability solutions contain different elements of the solution, such as: production, business rule, business process, data transformation, record mapper. And sometimes we can create and modify these elements with UI tools.  And of course we need a handy and robust way to source-control the changes made with UI tools.

For a long time this was a manual (export class, element, global, etc) or cumbersome settings procedure, so the saved time with source-control UI automation was competing with lost time to setup and maintain the settings.

Our gj :: codeSpex extension for VS Code, which is part of the DX Jetpack, allows documentation to be displayed inline while you are coding classes. In some cases the documentation is extensive, and the lack of scrolling support in the VS Code comment element we are using was degrading the DX.

By contributing a pull request to the VS Code project (my 94th accepted in the past four years) I was able to get this resolved. It landed in today's Insiders and will reach the general release (a.k.a. Stable) next month when 1.78 ships. Here's the result:

Hi folks!

When I launch IRIS as a docker container instance, e.g. like this one:

docker run --name iris-sql -d --publish 9091:1972 --publish 9092:52773 intersystemsdc/iris-community

And then try to connect to it e.g. via irissqlcli it says I need to change the password:

irissqlcli iris://_SYSTEM:SYS@localhost:9091/USER

Password change required

I know that I can open Management portal http://localhost:9092/csp/sys/UtilHome.csp and change password manually, but is there a programmatic way?

Say if I have a password in a file and I can just provide it to docker instance for the change?

Hi folks!

Lately (maybe last 2-3 years) I develop with IRIS exclusively in docker - so iris instance I use for compiling and running IRIS apps is local.

And most every time I enter password for management portal and web-apps. The same password every time. Sounds familiar?

Is there an easy way to have a parameter in docker build  for a "dev-mode" that will not ask me a password?

I am unable to open studio. Management Portal is working fine. But facing issue in login into studio. Access Denied. Native Code : 417

If you want to know more about a new project or generate a new way to see your project, the better way is using mindmaps or markdown documentation. The IRIS Connections allows to you generate the mindmap for your classes and get your classes documentation in a markdown file.

IRIS Connections installation

If you want to install using ZPM:

zpm:USER>install iris-connections

If you want to install using Docker:

1. Clone/git pull the repo into any local directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/yurimarx/iris-connections.git

2. Open the terminal in this directory and run:

$ docker-compose up -d --build

When you need to know the impact on a change in your project, it is very useful to see class dependencies in a network diagram. The IRIS Connections project allows you to see it.

IRIS Connections installation

If you want to install using ZPM:

zpm:USER>install iris-connections

If you want to install using Docker:

1. Clone/git pull the repo into any local directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/yurimarx/iris-connections.git

2. Open the terminal in this directory and run:

$ docker-compose up -d --build

Analyze your classes dependencies:

Go to your browser and access: