As we all know, InterSystems is a great company.

Their products can be just as useful as they are complex.

Yet, our pride sometimes prevents us from admitting that we might not understand some concepts or products that InterSystems offers for us.

Today we are beginning a series of articles explaining how some of the intricate InterSystems products work, obviously simply and clearly.

In this essay, I will clarify what Machine Learning is and how to take advantage of it.... because this time, you WILL KNOW for sure what I am talking about.

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Thirteen years ago, I attained dual undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and math, then promptly started full-time at InterSystems using neither. One of my most memorable and stomach-churning academic experiences was in Stats II. On an exam, I was solving a moderately difficult confidence interval problem. I was running out of time, so (being an engineer) I wrote out the definite integral on the exam paper, punched it into my graphing calculator, wrote an arrow with “calculator” over it, then wrote the result.

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The first part of this article provides all the background information. It also includes links to the DATATYPE_SAMPLE database, which you can use to follow along with the examples.

In that section, we explored an error type ("Access Failure") that is easy to detect, as it immediately triggers a clear error message when attempting to read the data via the database driver.

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Article
· Jun 12, 2017 1m read
Setting the Windows service account

I recently helped a site investigate a problem that appeared after they upgraded their Windows instance of Caché from 2015.1 to 2017.1. A terminal session launched from the server's desktop cube was unable to run OS-level commands using the $ZF(-1) function. For instance, using the no-op command "REM" as follows:

write $zf(-1,"rem")

was returning -1, indicating that the Windows command could not be issued.

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Prefer not to read? Check out the demo video I created:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-OwOAHC5b3s
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When using standard SQL or the object layer in InterSystems IRIS, metadata consistency is usually maintained through built-in validation and type enforcement. However, legacy systems that bypass these layers—directly accessing globals—can introduce subtle and serious inconsistencies.

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Who hasn't been developing a beautiful example using a Docker IRIS image and had the image generation process fail in the Dockerfile because the license under which the image was created doesn't contain certain privileges?

In my case, what I was deploying in Docker is a small application that uses the Vector data type. With the Community version, this isn't a problem because it already includes Vector Search and vector storage. However, when I changed the IRIS image to a conventional IRIS (the latest-cd), I found that when I built the image, including the classes it had generated, it returned this error:

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For my hundredth article on the Developer Community, I wanted to present something practical, so here's a comprehensive implementation of the GPG Interoperability Adapter for InterSystems IRIS.

Every so often, I would encounter a request for some GPG support, so I had several code samples written for a while, and I thought to combine all of them and add missing GPG functionality for a fairly complete coverage. That said, this Business Operation primarily covers data actions, skipping management actions such as key generation, export, and retrieval as they are usually one-off and performed manually anyways. However, this implementation does support key imports for obvious reasons. Well, let's get into it.

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Article
· Mar 7, 2023 3m read
_spec for swagger-ui from spec class

Surely you wanted to use the OpenAPI Specification (OAS) JSON you used for your spec class on the iris-web-swagger-ui iris package. The generated OAS from the ##class(%REST.API).GetWebRESTApplication(...) method is very crude, with no description on the parameters or the expected response structure.

So after creating your REST application from an OAS you should have:

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I know that people who are completely new to VS Code, Git, Docker, FHIR, and other tools can sometimes struggle with setting up the environment. So I decided to write an article that walks through the entire setup process step by step to make it easier to get started.

I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a comment at the end - let me know if the instructions were clear, if anything was missing, or if there’s anything else you'd find helpful.

The setup includes:

✅ VS Code – Code editor
✅ Git – Version control system
✅ Docker – Runs an instance of IRIS for Health Community
✅ VS Code REST Client Extension – For running FHIR API queries
✅ Python – For writing FHIR-based scripts
✅ Jupyter Notebooks – For AI and FHIR assignments

Before you begin: Ensure you have administrator privileges on your system.

In addition to reading the guide, you can also follow the steps in the videos:

For Windows

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IyvuHbxCwCY
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Article
· Jul 8, 2020 7m read
Tips for debugging with %Status

Introduction

If you're solving complex problems in ObjectScript, you probably have a lot of code that works with %Status values. If you have interacted with persistent classes from an object perspective (%Save, %OpenId, etc.), you have almost certainly seen them. A %Status provides a wrapper around a localizable error message in InterSystems' platforms. An OK status ($$$OK) is just equal to 1, whereas a bad status ($$$ERROR(errorcode,arguments...)) is represented as a 0 followed by a space followed by a $ListBuild list with structured information about the error. $System.Status (see class reference) provides several handy APIs for working with %Status values; the class reference is helpful and I won't bother duplicating it here. There have been a few other useful articles/questions on the topic as well (see links at the end). My focus in this article will be on a few debugging tricks techniques rather than coding best practices (again, if you're looking for those, see links at the end).

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One of the pain points for maintaining HL7 interfaces is the need to run a reliable regression test upon deployment to new environments and after upgrades. The %UnitTest class allows unit tests to be created and packaged alongside interface code. Test data can also be maintained within the unit test class, allowing for quick and easily repeatable smoke-testing and regression testing.

Resources:

  • Standard %UnitTest class

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Motivation

I didn't know about ObjectScript until I started my new job. Objectscript isn't actually a young programming language. Compared to C++, Java and Python, the community isn't as active, but we're keen to make this place more vibrant, aren't we?

I've noticed that some of my colleagues are finding it tricky to get their heads around the class relationships in these huge projects. There aren't any easy-to-use modern class diagram tool for ObjectScript.

Related Work

I have tried relavant works:

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Article
· Feb 1, 2023 17m read
OpenAPI Suite - Part 1

Hi Community,

I would like to present my last package OpenAPI-Suite, this is a set of tools to generate ObjectScript code from an OpenAPI specification version 3.0. In short, these packages allow to:

  • Generate server-side class. It’s pretty similar to the generated code by ^%REST but the added value is the version 3.0 support.
  • Generate HTTP client classes.
  • Generate client production (business services, business operation, business process, Ens.Request, Ens.Response) classes.
  • A web interface to generate and download the code or generate and compile directly on the server.
  • Convert specification from version 1.x, 2.x to version 3.0.

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Migrating InterSystems IRIS and InterSystems IRIS for Health from on-premises to the cloud offers many advantages for Application Providers and Solution Providers. These advantages include simplified operations, access to flexible resources, and enhanced resilience. Companies no longer need to worry about the physical constraints and expenses associated with maintaining on-prem infrastructure, such as power and space requirements and expensive computer hardware.

One of the most compelling benefits is the ability to accelerate speed to market. By removing the burden of infrastructure maintenance, cloud environments enable faster development and deployment cycles, allowing businesses to respond quickly to market demands and opportunities. Operational costs are also lowered, because companies can scale resources up or down based on actual needs, leading to more efficient use of capital. Moreover, migrating to the cloud can contribute to a reduced carbon footprint by optimizing energy usage through shared cloud infrastructure.

Transitioning to the cloud may involve significant changes. Companies may benefit from a more operational focus, managing and optimizing cloud resources continuously. This shift may require changes to business models, reconsideration of margins, and strategies for scaling operations up or out. While requiring more investment, embracing these changes can lead to improved agility and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

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Introduction

Database performance has become a critical success factor in a modern application environment. Therefore identifying and optimizing the most resource-intensive SQL queries is essential for guaranteeing a smooth user experience and maintaining application stability.

This article will explore a quick approach to analyzing SQL query execution statistics on an InterSystems IRIS instance to identify areas for optimization within a macro-application.

Rather than focusing on real-time monitoring, we will set up a system that collects and analyzes statistics pre-calculated by IRIS once an hour. This approach, while not enabling instantaneous monitoring, offers an excellent compromise between the wealth of data available and the simplicity of implementation.

We will use Grafana for data visualization and analysis, InfluxDB for time series storage, and Telegraf for metrics collection. These tools, recognized for their power and flexibility, will allow us to obtain a clear and exploitable view.

More specifically, we will detail the configuration of Telegraf to retrieve statistics. We will also set up the integration with InfluxDB for data storage and analysis, and create customized dashboards in Grafana. This will help us quickly identify queries requiring special attention.

To facilitate the orchestration and deployment of these various components, we will employ Docker.

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Hi Community,

Traditional keyword-based search struggles with nuanced, domain-specific queries. Vector search, however, leverages semantic understanding, enabling AI agents to retrieve and generate responses based on context—not just keywords.

This article provides a step-by-step guide to creating an Agentic AI RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) application.

Implementation Steps:

  1. Create Agent Tools
    • Add Ingest functionality: Automatically ingests and index documents (e.g., InterSystems IRIS 2025.1 Release Notes).
    • Implement Vector Search Functionality
  2. Create Vector Search Agent
  3. Handoff to Triage (Main Agent)
  4. Run The Agent
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What I find really useful about IRIS when teaching my subject of Postrelational databases is the fact that it is a multi model database. Which means that I can actually go into architecture and structure and all that only once but then show the usage of different models (like object, document, hierarchy) using the same language and approach. And it is not a huge leap to go from an object oriented programming language (like C#, Java etc) to an object oriented database.

However, along with advantages (which are many) come some drawbacks when we switch from object oriented model to relational. When I say that you can get access to the same data using different models I need to also explain how it is possible to work with lists and arrays from object model in relational table. With arrays it is very simple - by default they are represented as separate tables and that's the end of it. With lists - it's harder because by default it's a string. But one still wants to do something about it without damaging the structure and making this list unreadable in the object model.

So in this article I will showcase a couple of predicates and a function that are useful when working with lists, and not just as fields.

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The "Ask Developer Community AI" tool is an excellent resource for studying for the certification. I asked it about each topic that will be covered in the test and the results are below.
Note: I classified each answer by the assertiveness that I consider as good, average and bad.

Note 2: The article has 4 parts, each one for an exam area.

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The "Ask Developer Community AI" tool is an excellent resource for studying for the certification. I asked it about each topic that will be covered in the test and the results are below.
Note: I classified each answer by the assertiveness that I consider as good, average and bad.

Note 2: The article has 4 parts, each one for an exam area.

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The "Ask Developer Community AI" tool is an excellent resource for studying for the certification. I asked it about each topic that will be covered in the test and the results are below.
Note: I classified each answer by the assertiveness that I consider as good, average and bad.

Note 2: The article has 4 parts, each one for an exam area.

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The "Ask Developer Community AI" tool is an excellent resource for studying for the certification. I asked it about each topic that will be covered in the test and the results are below.
Note: I classified each answer by the assertiveness that I consider as good, average and bad.

Note 2: The article has 4 parts, each one for an exam area.

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