Adopting InterSystems IRIS: from CACHETEMP to IRISTEMP

Article

Alexey Maslov · Dec 24, 2019 4m read

It seems that everyone who is moving from Caché to IRIS have noticed this small change among other, more noticeable ones. But have you noticed that temporary globals mapping rules have been changed as well?

As to Adoption Guide ("InterSystems IRIS 2019.1 Document Version: 2.42 32 Adoption Guide for Caché & Ensemble customers. C. Application Development"), there are some differences in reserved global names patterns. Here are those that concern IRISTEMP:

Caché / Ensemble	InterSystems IRIS	Comment
^CacheTemp*	<none>	You are free to define a preferred global name pattern for temporary globals and map it to IRISTEMP. For compatibility purposes, ^CacheTemp* will continue to be mapped to IRISTEMP automatically.

But if you take a look at your namespace using some global explorer (e.g., the standard one, available with System Management Portal), you may notice some other globals, e.g. many of them that matches ^IRIS.Temp* pattern. Having been curious to get a full list, I've got it with ^%NSP utility redirecting its output to file:

 set x="/tmp/map.txt" open x:("NW"):1 else  write "not writable "_x
 use x do SHOW^%NSP close x
 
 <... view locally or download map.txt file from IRIS server ...>

 set x="/tmp/map.txt" open x:("NW"):1 close x:("D") ; delete the file

Here is an extract from map.txt file that concerns IRISTEMP global mappings only:

Namespace: QMS
Default globals location:  directory /opt/bases/i-qms-d/ (local) 
Default % routines location: directory /opt/iris/mgr/ (local) 
*********************************************************************
Global name/Range         Dirset    Target directory
---------------------------------------------------------------------
   [%utility]          ->           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
                       *>           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
   [CacheTemp:CacheTemq)->          /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
                       *>           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
   [IRIS.Temp:IRIS.Temq)->          /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
                       *>           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
   [mtemp:mtemq)       ->           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
                       *>           /opt/iris/mgr/iristemp/
=====================================================================
          [<global>] shows redirection scheme for one global;
          [<global1>:<global2>] shows redirection scheme for a
              range between 2 globals; a square bracket [] means that
               left or right margin is inclusive, while a parenthesis
               means that the margin is exclusive.
               An empty parenthesis before or after ':', that is 
               (: or :) , means that the redirection scheme is 
               effective from the start of alphabet space, or till
               its end, respectively
               A subscript mapping is missing if it is the same as 
               the default mapping of the global. The default mapping
              of a global is missing if it is the same as the default
               global dataset.
          ->  implicit
          *>  lock target

So, there are a few additions to "Adoption Guide" table:

Caché / Ensemble	InterSystems IRIS	Comment
^%utility	^%utility	Used by some CLI utilities.
<none>	^IRIS.Temp*	Used by IRIS internally. Avoiding such names for application globals seems to be a reasonable precaution.
^mtemp*	^mtemp*	Seems to be still in use by IRIS SQL, while they were mentioned as legacy many years ago. ^mtempSomeLegacyAppCode* can be in use as well.

Hope this help somebody on the way to InterSystems IRIS.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!