Interoperability on Python (IoP) is a proof-of-concept project designed to showcase the power of the InterSystems IRIS Interoperability Framework when combined with a Python-first approach.IoP leverages Embedded Python (a feature of InterSystems IRIS) to enable developers to write interoperability components in Python, which can seamlessly integrate with the robust IRIS platform. This guide has been crafted for beginners and provides a comprehensive introduction to IoP, its setup, and practical steps to create your first interoperability component. By the end of this article, you will get a clear understanding of how to use IoP to build scalable, Python-based interoperability solutions.

IoP is particularly valuable for developers working with InterSystems IRIS or IRIS for Health, since it simplifies the creation of Business Services, Business Processes, and Business Operations that use Python. Such an approach reduces the reliance on ObjectScript (the traditional language for IRIS development), making it more accessible to Python developers.


Why Should We Use IoP?

IoP offers several advantages for developers:

  1. Python-First Development: Python is a widely adopted, beginner-friendly language with a rich ecosystem of libraries. IoP allows developers to leverage their Python expertise within the IRIS ecosystem.
  2. Simplified Interoperability: IoP abstracts complex ObjectScript-based configurations, enabling faster development of interoperability components.
  3. Healthcare Applications: IoP is particularly suited for healthcare integrations, such as those involving FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources), due to IRIS for Health's robust support for healthcare standards.
  4. Community and Open Source: IoP is available on PyPI and GitHub and has active community support, including contributions from developers like Guillaume Rongier (a developer evangelist for InterSystems).

Prerequisites

Before diving into IoP, ensure you have the following:

  • InterSystems IRIS or IRIS for Health: A local installation or a Docker container running IRIS (Community Edition is sufficient for testing).
  • Python 3.10 or later: Required for running IoP and its dependencies.
  • Basic Python Knowledge: Familiarity with Python classes, functions, and package installation.

In this tutorial, we will use a local IRIS installation to create an InterSystems IRIS production featuring a Python-based Business Operation that logs a 'Hello World' message upon receiving a request. It should showcase seamless integration with the IRIS Interoperability Framework.

The following steps outline the process for achieving this goal:

  • Step 1: Set Up the Virtual Environment
  • Step 2: Install IoP Package
  • Step 3: Set Up Environment Variables for IRIS Connection
  • Step 4: Initialize the IoP Module in IRIS by using the Command line interface (CLI)
  • Step 5: Create Python Business Operation: A Hello World Example
  • Step 6: Migrate IoP components into IRIS
  • Step 7: Production Overview
  • Step 8: Test the Production Operation component

Let's begin with the step 1.

Step1: Set Up the Virtual Environment

First, set up a Python virtual environment to isolate your project’s dependencies, ensuring compatibility with IoP and InterSystems IRIS. A virtual environment is a self-contained directory with a specific Python version and the packages required for your project. Such a setup prevents conflicts with other Python projects and streamlines the development process. For this tutorial, create a folder named IOP to organize your project files.

Navigate to the IOP folder and run the following command to set up the virtual environment:

python -m venv .venv

This command creates a .venv directory in your IOP folder, containing a Python interpreter and any packages you install for your IoP project.

To activate the virtual environment on Windows, apply the next command:

.venv\Scripts\activate



For Unix or MacOS, utilize the below command:

source .venv/bin/activate

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InterSystems Developer Community is a community of 23,979 amazing developers
We're a place where InterSystems IRIS programmers learn and share, stay up-to-date, grow together and have fun!

In the Caché database, when calculating the total count based on the unique identifier of a record, the quantity is over 1.2 million. After removing duplicates based on the unique identifier and then calculating the total count, the quantity is over 400,000. When grouping by the unique identifier, it can be observed that the count for this identifier is not one. However, when performing a conditional query based on the identifier, only one record can be retrieved. Why is this the case?

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While starting with Intersystems IRIS or Cache, developers often encounter three core concepts: Dynamic Objects, Globals & Relational Table. Each has its role in building scalable and maintainable solutions. In this article, we'll walk through practical code examples, highlight best practices, and show how these concepts tie together.

1. Working with Dynamic Objects:

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The August Article Bounty on the Global Masters article caught my attention, and one of the proposed topics sounded quite interesting in regard to its future use in my teaching. So, here's what I'd like to tell my students about tables in IRIS and how they correlate with the object model.

First of all, InterSystems IRIS boasts a unified data model. This means that when you work with data, you are not locked into a single paradigm. The same data can be accessed and manipulated as a traditional SQL table, as a native object, or even as a multidimensional array (a global). It means that when you create an SQL table, IRIS automatically creates a corresponding object class. When you define an object class, IRIS automatically makes it available as an SQL table. The data itself is stored only once in IRIS's efficient multidimensional storage engine. The SQL engine and the object engine are simply different "lenses" to view and work with the same data.

First, let's look at the correlation between the relational model and the object model:

Relational Object
Table Class
Column Property
Row Object
Primary key Object Identifier

It's not always a 1:1 correlation, as you may have several tables represent one class, for example. But it's a general rule of thumb.

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Among the many contributors shaping the InterSystems Developer Community, some bring not only deep technical knowledge but a long-term vision and passion for empowering others. One of these exceptional voices belongs to @John Murray, a veteran of InterSystems technologies, an open-source advocate, and a founding member of the Developer Community.

👏 Let’s take a closer look at John’s remarkable journey and his continuing legacy in the InterSystems ecosystem.

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I would like to know which are the best practices of using Streams in Interoperability messages.

I have always use %Stream.GlobalCharacter properties to hold a JSON, or a base64 document, when creating messages. This is fine and I can see the content in Visual Trace without doing anything, so I can check what is happening and resolve issues if I have, or reprocess messages if something went wrong, because I have the content.

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Article
· Aug 15 8m read
Dynamic Entities and %JSON

Dynamic Entities (objects and arrays) in IRIS are incredibly useful in situations where you are having to transform JSON data into an Object Model for storage to the database, such as in REST API endpoints hosted within IRIS. This is because these dynamic objects and arrays can easily serve as a point of conversion from one data structure to the other.

Dynamic Objects

Dynamic Objects are very similar to the standard ObjectScript object model you get when you create a new instance of a class object, but with some key differences:

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Is there a way to Remove specific all Addresses from a Provider.Individual.Address before reinserting the Addresses from an HL7 message in Provider Directory?

Most fields we can call %clearFields() however since Addresses come from multiple locations we need to isolate and treat Addresses from this HL7 source as a snapshot.

Thanks

Scott

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Contestant

#InterSystems Demo Games entry


⏯️ MyVitals: Connecting Wearable Health Data to EHRs with InterSystems

MyVitals is a Personal Health Device Hub that bridges the gap between wearable health devices and clinical workflows. In this demo, we show how healthcare organizations can enroll patients, collect real-time data from personal devices via mobile apps, and seamlessly integrate that information into EHR systems using FHIR, HL7, and InterSystems technology. Built on IRIS for Health and FHIR repositories, MyVitals turns disconnected wearable data into actionable clinical insights—securely, efficiently, and at scale.

Presenters:
🗣 @Alberto Fuentes, Sales Engineer, InterSystems
🗣 @Pierre-Yves Duquesnoy, Senior Sales Engineer, InterSystems
🗣 @Luis Angel Pérez Ramos, Sales Engineer, InterSystems

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2O0KZ__todk
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Over the years, I’ve noticed that certain SQL questions come up repeatedly on the InterSystems Developer Community, especially about using the LIKE predicate in different contexts. Common variations include:

and many more derivatives. So, I decided to write an article that focuses on how LIKE works in InterSystems IRIS SQL, especially when used with variables in Embedded SQL, Dynamic SQL, and Class Queries, while touching on pattern escaping and special character searches.

First of all, I'd like to mention that InterSystems IRIS SQL offers most of the capabilities available in other relational DBMS that implement a later version of the SQL standard. But at the same time, it's important to mention that apart from relational access, in IRIS you can also use other models to get the same data, for example, object or document models.

On this note, let's look at the LIKE predicate and how this tool is used in SQL for pattern matching.

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Hi, Community!

Looking for ways to improve your application testing? See how to build requirements such as performance and scalability into your development workflow:

Testing Non-functional Requirements in Applications

https://www.youtube.com/embed/wkL7ciIOSzY?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wkL7ciIOSzY
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Question
· Aug 9
Manifest or Class?

I have the unfortunate job of installing IRIS and Healthshare (real Healthshare not Healthconnect) on 16 difference instances (tst, stg, prd with mirrors etc). the Dev was set up manually (mostly by me).

So I decided to create a class that installed the db's, namespaces, mappings and HSREGISTRY options , i then decided an installer manifest was a better idea, I keep changing my mind on which!. I understanding manifest is "typically" for dockers to create the environment but have seen ISC use them for creating new setups aswell (outside docker)

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The operations manager in our company was using structured logging in IRIS to tail information to an on-prem monitoring tool and started to get concerned with the ever-growing size of the output file. He just leaned across the aisle here and informed me that the output file has no mechanism for rolling this file over at a certain point for archival or disposal. Sure enough, I can't find any documentation to refute this.

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Hey Community!

We're happy to share the next video in the "Code to Care" series on our InterSystems Developers YouTube:

Can AI Fix Bugs? Inside the Benchmarking Effort

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OHi2yo8E7g4
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Hi everyone,

I am trying to create a treeMapChart in IRIS BI that will then be displayed on my DeepSeeWeb dashboard. In the IRIS BI User Portal, this is an example of what my treeMapChart looks like:

I know there is a huge amount of rectangles in this graphic - I care most about the common components (the largest boxes) but I still want all of the boxes to show. However, it projects to my DeepSeeWeb dashboard as the following:

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Contestant

#InterSystems Demo Games entry


⏯️ Data Transformation Adventures with InterSystems IRIS

Navigating interoperability and healthcare can be an exciting adventure. In this demo, we will show you how InterSystems IRIS can be the perfect tool to get data - wherever it may lie, in whatever format, into a format of your choice, including FHIR! Once that is done, analytics is a piece of cake with the FHIR SQL Builder and Deep See Web. Let the questing begin!

Presenters:
🗣 @Kate Lau, Sales Engineer, InterSystems
🗣 @Merlin Wijaya, Sales Engineer, InterSystems
🗣 @Martyn Lee, Sales Engineer, InterSystems
🗣 @Bryan Hoon, Sales Engineer, InterSystems

https://www.youtube.com/embed/fuR6OLU1oks
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For example, you start debugging the AAA function, which calls the BBB function, then goes to the CCC^ABC function in a different routine and ends up while executing XXX^XYZ. No other routines or functions are visited in this example. What I would like is to get the record of AAA -> BBB -> CCC^ABC -> XXX^XYZ. No marking each function with recording code should be involved: too time consuming, too many functions in real code.

UPD: Iris has built in %SYS.Trace for this purpose but this class is apparently absent in Cache 2017. Did not find any substitutes yet.

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Hey, Developer Community!

We’ve launched a brand-new activity on Global Masters — the Article Bounty!
It’s your chance to share your expertise, help fellow developers, and, of course, earn points while doing it.

👉 Join the August Article Bounty on Global Masters here

Earlier, we launched the Submit an Article Idea challenge — where Global Masters members could suggest new articles, tutorials, how-tos, and more. We received an overwhelming number of fantastic ideas!

👉 Now, once a month, we’ll publish a list of 10 in-demand topics requested by the community.
You can choose a topic from the list, write an article about it, and earn bounty of 🏆 5,000
points when the article is approved.

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I have a personal copy of Cache which I use to help me with certain things. The instance resides on my Windows desktop. The apps I use a web enabled. It would be great if I could access my apps via web browser from my laptop without having to keep a copy of Cache on my laptop. It would make it difficult to keep the databases synced. So, if I restart my Cache instance, then I can use get to my apps by entering the url: http://ipadd:57772/csp/user/myapp.cls.

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Been testing out the Production Validator toolkit, just to see what we can/not do with it. Seems really interesting and there seem to be some use cases for it that can really streamline some upgrades (or at least parts of upgrades) but I was running into so many hurdles with the documentation. I am curious if anyone else has used it.

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Visual Studio Code releases new updates every month with new features and bug fixes, and the July 2025 release is now available.

Enhancements include revamped tool picker and expanded tool limits for MCPs, Chat GPT-5 integration and chat checkpoints, and multi-branch Git worktrees plus coding agent session management to improve productivity.

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When I open a class in VS Code and I want to save it I'm getting the following error : Non-JSON response to /api/atelier/v7/DEV/doc/API.Mollie.Execute.cls?ignoreConflict=0 request. Is the web server suppressing detailed errors?

Also I always get a popup when I open VS Code "The extension wants to sign in using InterSystems Server Credentials."

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