I haven't seen anything "official" but there was this article from 2021 that provided a way to recreate it:

VSCode Tips & Tricks - SOAP Wizard | InterSystems Developer Community |
 

Hey Christine.

If I'm reading your question and subsequent replies correctly, you're trying to take the value of PV1:7.1, and then use that in a SQL query. The answer has been given by Ashok when you put their replies together, but hopefully putting it all into a single response will make things easier to follow.

If this is the case, then you will want to do the following:

Step 1: Set a variable to the value of PV1:7.1:

Step 2: Add a code block, and use this to run your sql query:

Step 3: Do what you need to with the value of ID - for the sake of this response, I'm just setting the value of PV1:7.2 to the ID returned from the query that inserted into the variable "Output":

It's worth knowing that, when working with Embedded SQL, prefixing a variable with a colon is how you can pass variables in and out of the Embedded SQL section of code. However it's a bit clearer when working directly with ObjectScript vs a DTL.

For example, if we had the following table:

We could have the following in ObjectScript:

    Set X = "" // X is null
    Set Y = "ABC"
    &SQL(
        SELECT COL_B
        into :X
        From TestTable
        WHERE COL_A = :Y
    )
    WRITE X //X is 123
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

I don't believe there is a way of increasing the system limit on string lengths. Even if there is, it's best to approach this by working with the data as a stream.

Otherwise you could end up in a cat and mouse game of needing to increase the length the next time you get a larger document

The input is a string, so the max length will be your system max (which should be 3,641,144).

Assuming you're trying to retrieve the stream from a HL7 message, you will probably want to use the built in method GetFieldStreamBase64

So you could try something like:

Set tStream = ##class(%Stream.TmpBinary).%New()
Set tSC = pHL7.GetFieldStreamBase64(.tStream,"OBX:5")
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

And then your decoded file would be in the temp stream.

(You may need to tweak this slightly depending on how you intend to then use the stream, and the correct property path of the Base64 within the HL7 message)

This is a rather subjective based on the skill level of the intended audience.

You could add a comment to the ClassMethod to provide context to what is being done and why. For example:

/// This ClassMethod takes a delimited String from System-X that consists of sets of Questions and Answers. 
/// The Sets are delimited by a pipe "|" and then the questions and answers are delimeted by a colon ":"
/// The response from this ClassMethod is a %Library.DynamicArray object containing the questions and answers
ClassMethod createResponse(data As %String(MAXLEN="")) As %Library.DynamicArray
{
    ;1.- Questions splitted by "|"
    Set listQuestions 			= $LISTFROMSTRING(data, "|")
    Set items 			= []
    Set questionNumber 	= 0
    ;2.- Iterate
    For i=1:1:$LISTLENGTH(listQuestions) {
        Set questionAnswer = $LISTGET(listQuestions, i)
        ;3.- Update variables
        Set questionNumber 	= questionNumber + 1
        Set question 		= $PIECE(questionAnswer, ":", 1)
        Set answer 		    = $ZSTRIP($PIECE(questionAnswer, ":", 2), "<W") //Get rid of initial whitespace
        ;4.- Generate item
        Set item 			= 									
        {
        "definition": ("question "_(questionNumber)),
        "text": (question),
        "answer": 
        [
            {
                "valueString": (answer)
            }
        ]
        }
        Do items.%Push(item)
    }	
    Quit items
}
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

Or you could go one step further and be more descriptive with your comment at each action within your code. So, instead of:

;2.- Iterate

You could write something like:

;2.- Iterate through the list of Questions and Answers

If your intended audience is not familiar with ObjectScript, then you may want to introduce them to features in stages. For example, you could use $ZSTRIP on both the question and answer in your For loop, but only nest it for the answer and use comments to describe it all. Something like:

// Retrieve the question from the delimited entry
Set tQuestion = $PIECE(questionAnswer, ":", 1)

// Strip any whitespace from the start of the question
Set question = $ZSTRIP(tQuestion, "<W")

// It is also possible to nest functions, so below we will retrieve the answer and remove the whitespace in a single line.
Set answer = $ZSTRIP($PIECE(questionAnswer, ":", 2), "<W")
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

Hey Kurro.

I'm not sure of a built in function for this, but if you wanted to have your own:

Class Demo.FunctionSets.Example
{

ClassMethod Format(InputString As %String, Params... As %String) As %String
{
	Set OutputString = InputString
	For i = 1 : 1 : $GET(Params, 0){
		Set OutputString = $Replace(OutputString,"{"_i_"}",Params(i))
	}
	
	Quit OutputString
}

}
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

And then:

Write ##Class(Demo.FunctionSets.example).Format("My name is {1} and I'm {2} years","Kurro","18")
My name is Kurro and I'm 18 years

Hey Yuri.

The users are held within the SQL table "Security.Users" in the %SYS namespace, so you could use embedded sql to return the information, however as you're unlikely to be executing your code directly from the %SYS namespace, I'd suggest creating a function that you pass the email address, and it returns the username.

Something like:

Class Demo.Utils.General.Users
{

ClassMethod UserFromEmail(Email As %String, Output Username As %String) As %Status
{
	//Initially set this to null, as we want to return it empty when we get no results
	Set Username = ""
	//Hold the Namespace within a variable so we can use the variable to set the namespace back once the SQL has been run.
	Set CurrNamespace = $NAMESPACE
	//Change NameSpace to %SYS
	Set $NAMESPACE = "%SYS"
	//Run query to get the Username based on the email address - note the use of the UPPER function to remove issues with case sensitivity
	&SQL(
	Select ID into :Username
	FROM Security.Users
	WHERE UPPER(EmailAddress) = UPPER(:Email)
	)
	
	//Set namespace back to the namespace the function was run from
	Set $NAMESPACE = CurrNamespace
	
	//Evaluate SQLCODE for result
	//Less than 0 is an error.
	If SQLCODE <0{
		WRITE "SQLCODE="_$SYSTEM.SQL.Functions.SQLCODE(SQLCODE)
		QUIT 0
		}
	
	//Greater than 0 can really only mean Code 100, which is no results found.
	If SQLCODE > 0 {
		QUIT 1 //No Result Found
		}
	Else {
		QUIT 1 //Result Found
		}
}

}
ObjectScript
ObjectScript

DEMO> WRITE Class(Demo.Utils.General.Users).UserFromEmail("YuriMarx@ACME.XYZ",.Output)
1

DEMO> WRITE Output
YMARX

This is by no means perfect as I have thrown it together for the example - please forgive the messy if/else's! 

There's a few "gotchas" when it comes to Character Encoding. But the key thing in you case is understanding the character encoding being used by the receiving system. This should be something specified in the specification of the receiving system, but many times it's not.

If I had to guess, it's most likely that the receiving system is using UTF-8 simply because latin1/ISO-8859-1 encodes the pound symbol as hex "A3" whereas UTF-8 encodes to  "C2 A3". As there's no solitary "A3" in UTF-8, there's nothing to print, which is why you get the ? instead. I'm sure there's other character sets where this can happen, but I would start there.