Introduction

A REST API (Representational State Transfer) is an interface that allows different applications to communicate with each other through the HTTP protocol, using standard operations such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. REST APIs are widely used in software development to expose services accessible by other applications, enabling integration between different systems.

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Unlike the movie mentioned in the image (for those who don't know, Matrix, 1999), the choice between Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL is not a choice between truth and fantasy, but it is still a decision to be made. Below, I will try to make your choice easier.

If your need is interactions between the client and the application (and consequently the database), Dynamic SQL may be more appropriate, as it "adapts" very easily to these query changes. However, this dynamism has a cost: with each new query, it is remodeled, which can have a higher cost to execute. Below is a simple example of a Python code snippet.

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Among the numerous authors present on the InterSystems Developer Community, there are unsung heroes who leave a lasting impact through their dedication and contributions. One such member is @Ben Spead, whose experiences and milestones have greatly shaped our Developer Community. He has consistently championed the communities, starting with Zen Community in 2008 to being an early participant in the Developer Community's beta phase in 2015.

🤩 Let's take a closer look at Ben's journey with InterSystems technology and our Developer Community...

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Monitoring your IRIS deployment is crucial. With the deprecation of System Alert and Monitoring (SAM), a modern, scalable solution is necessary for real-time insights, early issue detection, and operational efficiency. This guide covers setting up Prometheus and Grafana in Kubernetes to monitor InterSystems IRIS effectively.

This guide assumes you already have an IRIS cluster deployed using the InterSystems Kubernetes Operator (IKO), which simplifies deployment, integration and mangement.

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When we create a FHIR repository in IRIS, we have an endpoint to access information, create new resources, etc. But there are some resources in FHIR that probably we wont have in our repository, for example, Binary resource (this resource returns a document, like PDF for example).

I have created an example that when a Binary resource is requested, FHIR endpoint returns a response, like it exists in the repository.

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In the world of APIs, REST is very extended. But what happens when you need more flexibility in your data-fetching strategies? For instance letting the client to choose what fields is going to receive. Enter GraphQL, a query language for your APIs that provides a flexible alternative to REST.

In this post, we will:

  • Compare REST and GraphQL.
  • Dive into the basics of GraphQL: Queries, Mutations, and HTTP.
  • Build a simple GraphQL server implementation using Graphene, SQLAlchemy, and Flask over data in InterSystems IRIS.
  • Explore how to deploy your GraphQL server as a WSGI application in IRIS.
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Hey Community!

Here's the recap of the final half-day of the InterSystems Ready 2025! It was the last chance to see everyone and say farewell until next time.

It was a warm and energetic closing, with great conversations, smiles, and unforgettable memories!


The final Ready 2025 moment with our amazing team!

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Today, we'd like to spotlight one of the standout members of the InterSystems Developer Community: @Benjamin De Boe. Since the inception of the InterSystems Developer Community, he has shared his expertise, contributing thoughtful articles, practical demos, and answers to questions. Having worked with InterSystems products since 2010, Benjamin brought invaluable knowledge to the Developer Community. From navigating iKnow projects to simplifying complex deployments with Docker and Python, he has continually inspired fellow developers through his work and presence on the Community.

🤩 Let's take a closer look at Benjamin's journey with InterSystems technology and our Developer Community...

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Today, we take a moment to shine the spotlight on one of the true pillars of the InterSystems Developer Community, @Alberto Fuentes. His commitment, expertise, and enthusiasm have left an indelible mark on the Developer Community, and we couldn’t be more grateful. Alberto has been a part of the InterSystems ecosystem for over 15 years, starting his journey with InterSystems technology back in 2008. Since then, he has worn many hats, from integrating Ensemble at his previous job to officially joining InterSystems in 2011 and now holding the position of Sales Engineer. Over the years, he’s witnessed—and contributed to—some of the most significant milestones in the company’s history.

🤩 Let’s dive into his remarkable journey!

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Among the many voices that shape the InterSystems Developer Community, some stand out not only for their knowledge but for their consistency, curiosity, and passion. One of those voices belongs to @Dmitry Maslennikov, a long-time member whose experience spans nearly two decades and who continues to innovate and inspire developers around the globe.

🤩 Let's take a look at Dmitry’s deep-rooted journey with InterSystems and his lasting impact on our Community...

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InterSystems Official
· Mar 27 4m read
2025.1 Modernizing Interoperability User Experience

The Interoperability user interface now includes modernized user experiences for the DTL Editor and Production Configuration applications that are available for opt-in in all interoperability products. You can switch between the modernized and standard views. All other Interoperability screens remain in the Standard user interface. Please note that changes are limited to these two applications and we identify below the functionality that is currently available.

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Article
· Sep 25, 2024 1m read
Same old terminal but in web

We have Webterminal around for quite a while, but it was limited, not all features worked there. There was no shell support or the latest feature as embedded Python support. There are some issues with tools that require programmer mode. Basic Authorization, not as handy as simple login page, where you could have options to add own login page, in case if you would wish to change the way how to login to the application, such as using SSO.

With the original iris terminal, wrapped into a web form, using most used in the web world xterm.js, used in tools like VSCode as well, with some magic from Python, which helped with interprocess tty. We can get the the terminal in the web, in the full capacity.

iTerm

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Learning LLM Magic

The world of Generative AI has been pretty inescapable for a while, commercial models running on paid Cloud instances are everywhere. With your data stored securely on-prem in IRIS, it might seem daunting to start getting the benefit of experimentation with Large Language Models without having to navigate a minefield of Governance and rapidly evolving API documentation. If only there was a way to bring an LLM to IRIS, preferably in a very small code footprint....

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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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Among the numerous authors of the InterSystems Developer Community, some members stand out for their dedication and lasting impact. One such member is @Mihoko Iijima, whose journey with InterSystems spans over two decades. From her early experiences with Caché to her deep involvement in the Developer Community, she has continuously contributed to knowledge-sharing and collaboration, shaping the experience for fellow developers.

🤩 Let's take a closer look at Mihoko's journey with InterSystems technology and our Developer Community...

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From the previous article, we identified some issues when working with JSON in SQL.

IRIS offers a dedicated feature for handling JSON documents, called DocDB.

InterSystems IRIS® data platform DocDB is a facility for storing and retrieving database data. It is compatible with, but separate from, traditional SQL table and field (class and property) data storage and retrieval. It is based on JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) which provides support for web-based data exchange. InterSystems IRIS provides support for developing DocDB databases and applications in REST and in ObjectScript, as well as providing SQL support for creating or querying DocDB data.

By its nature, InterSystems IRIS Document Database is a schema-less data structure. That means that each document has its own structure, which may differ from other documents in the same database. This has several benefits when compared with SQL, which requires a pre-defined data structure.

The word “document” is used here as a specific industry-wide technical term, as a dynamic data storage structure. “Document”, as used in DocDB, should not be confused with a text document, or with documentation.

Let's explore how DocDB can help store JSON in the database and integrate it into projects that rely solely on xDBC protocols.

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I recently had to refresh my knowledge of the HealthShare EMPI module and since I've been tinkering with IRIS's vector storage and search functionalities for a while I just had to add 1 + 1.

For those of you who are not familiar with EMPI functionality here's a little introduction:

Enterprise Master Patient Index

In general, all EMPIs work in a very similar way, ingesting information, normalizing it and comparing it with the data already present in their system. Well, in the case of HealthShare's EMPI, this process is known as NICE:

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High-Performance Message Searching in Health Connect

The Problem

Have you ever tried to do a search in Message Viewer on a busy interface and had the query time out? This can become quite a problem as the amount of data increases. For context, the instance of Health Connect I am working with does roughly 155 million Message Headers per day with 21 day message retention. To try and help with search performance, we extended the built-in SearchTable with commonly used fields in hopes that indexing these fields would result in faster query times. Despite this, we still couldn't get some of these queries to finish at all.

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Hi Community!

I'm super excited to be your on-the-ground reporter for the biggest developer event of the year - InterSystems Ready 2025!

As you may know from previous years, our global summits are always exciting, exhilarating, and packed with valuable knowledge, innovative ideas, and exciting news from InterSystems. This year is no different. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and start from the beginning.

Pre-summit day was, as usual, filled with fun and educational experiences. Those who enjoy playing golf (I among them) got up at the crack of dawn to tee off before the sun got too high up. Here's our dream team in action:

@sween, @Mark Bolinsky, @Anzelem Sanyatwe, @Iryna Mykhailova

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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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After so many years of waiting, we finally got an official driver available on Pypi

Additionally, found JDBC driver finally available on Maven already for 3 months, and .Net driver on Nuget more than a month.

As an author of so many implementations of IRIS support for various Python libraries, I wanted to check it. Implementation of DB-API means that it should be replaceable and at least functions defined in the standard. The only difference should be in SQL.

And the beauty of using already existing libraries, that they already implemented other databases by using DB-API standard, and these libraries already expect how driver should work.

I decided to test InterSystems official driver by implementing its support in SQLAlchemy-iris library.

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Article
· Sep 11, 2024 9m read
Dates with InterSystems

Do not let the title of this article confuse you; we are not planning to take the InterSystems staff out to a fine Italian restaurant. Instead, this article will cover the principles of working with date and time data types in IRIS. When we use these data types, we should be aware of three different conversion issues:

  1. Converting between internal and ODBC formats.
  2. Converting between local time, UTC, and Posix time.
  3. Converting to and from various date display formats.

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