intersystems-community / intersystems-community/vscode-objectscript

Visual assistant for Global-to-Table mapping (similar to InterSystems Studio)

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#1,701 3 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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enhancement priority/awaiting-more-evidence
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
117
Forks
59
Avg merge
1d 2h
Merged PRs (30d)
23

Description

The legacy InterSystems Studio provides a very useful visual assistant for mapping Globals to SQL Tables, allowing developers to create, inspect and maintain these mappings in a graphical way.

Currently, when using VSCode with the vscode-objectscript extension, we could not find any equivalent feature. All mapping work must be done manually via code, which makes it harder to:

  • Quickly understand existing global/table mappings;
  • Maintain legacy systems;
  • Migrate teams that previously relied on Studio.

My propose here is to add a visual panel / window / assistant in VSCode that allows developers to:

  • View which globals are mapped to which tables;
  • Navigate between Global ↔ Table ↔ Class;
  • Inspect and possibly edit mapping properties (columns, keys, indexes, etc.).

It does not need to replicate Studio’s UI exactly, but providing a visual alternative would significantly improve productivity.

I believe this feature is still heavily used in real-world projects that rely on SQL over globals, and its absence in VSCode is currently one of the main blockers for fully replacing Studio.

If a similar feature already exists and we missed it, please let me know.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by reviewing the extension's existing VS Code panels and how InterSystems global-to-table mappings are represented; define the supported Global ↔ Table ↔ Class navigation and mapping properties before implementation. Done means a visual panel can inspect mappings and clearly establishes the scope of any editing support.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
sql, typescript, vscode
Domain
database, developer-experience, tooling
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
28/100

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