Hey everyone,

I'm diving deeper into Caché ObjectScript and would love to open a discussion around the most useful tips, tricks, and best practices you’ve learned or discovered while working with it.

Whether you're an experienced developer or just getting started, ObjectScript has its own set of quirks and powerful features—some well-documented, others hidden gems. I’m looking to compile a helpful set of ideas from the community.

Some areas I’m especially interested in:

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Article
· May 2, 2025 3m read
Minify XML in IRIS

In a project I'm working on we need to store some arbitrary XML in the database. This XML does not have any corresponding class in IRIS, we just need to store it as a string (it's relatively small and can fit in a string).
Since there are MANY (millions!) of records in the database I decided to reduce as much as possible the size without compressing. I know that some XML to be stored is indented, some not, it varies.

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At the moment we're creating multiple BPLs are using a router (or another BPL) to direct to these based on a unique key modulo the amount of BPLs available, e.g. if we have 3 BPLs created.

Message key = 1 mod 3 + 1 -> BPL02
Message key = 2 mod 3 + 1 -> BPL03
Message key = 3 mod 3 + 1 -> BPL01

FIFO only matters in that each messages for each key is processed in order.

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Faced with the enormous and evergrowing amounts of data being generated in the world today, software architects need to pay special attention to the scalability of their solutions. They must also design systems that can, when needed, handle many thousands of concurrent users. It’s not easy, but designing for massive scalability is an absolute necessity.

A workload averaging 1000 1-kilobyte queries per second is compared with another involving 10 1-terabyte queries per hour

Software architects have several options for designing scalable systems. They can scale vertically by using bigger machines with dozens of cores. They can use data distribution (replication) techniques to scale horizontally for increasing numbers of users. And they can scale data volume horizontally through the use of a data partitioning strategy. In practice, software architects will employ several of these techniques, trading off hardware costs, code complexity, and ease of deployment to suit their particular needs.

This article will discuss how InterSystems IRIS Data Platform supports vertical scalability and horizontal scalability of both user and data volumes. It will outline several options for distributing and partitioning data and/or user volume, giving scenarios in which each option would be particularly useful. Finally, this paper will talk about how InterSystems IRIS helps simplify the configuration and provisioning of distributed systems.

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I'm exploring this right now: given a bunch of types defined as Pydantic models, how can I come up with an equivalent %RegisteredObject/%SerialObject and convert to/from (e.g., to support persistence and match validation as much as possible)?

People who know Python better than I do (e.g., your average undergraduate from this decade): is this a stupid idea or a cool idea? Has anyone else done this before?

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

There have been enhancements to GitHub Copilot with predictive editing, autonomous task completion, smarter code search, improved terminal and notebook support, and UI and workflow refinements.

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Hi Community,

We're excited to invite you to the webinar Configuring a Web Server for use with InterSystems IRIS.

Join this webinar for an engaging and insightful tech talk on the configuration of a web server to use with InterSystems IRIS.

⏱ Date & Time: Thursday, February 27, 10:30 AM GMT

👨‍🏫 Speaker: @Steve Mallam, HealthShare Team Lead, InterSystems UK&I

2025 Tech Talk Social Tile 27 Feb

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I have VS Code with extensions connected to IRIS for Health. One top-level ObjectScript package is not displayed in the workspace for this namespace. This package exists in the namespace and is visible in SMP. If I create a new class with a different top-level package name (package that didn't previously exist) it will immediately appear in the workspace.

Is there any debug logging I can enable to look for errors or do any other troubleshooting?

Forgot to mention: the missing package is custom, not a system package.

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Hi, I am unsure how to remove this restriction; when I am performing dynamic SQL using ##class(%SQL.Statement).%ExecDirectNoPriv(, .query, args...)

It works fine, but the moment I add specific properties from the persistent class I am performing the select on into the WHERE clause, I get: ERROR #5540: SQLCODE: -99 Message: User UnknownUser is not privileged for the operation. Despite using %ExecDirectNoPriv, I've tried with prepared statement as well, exact same situation.

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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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Question
· Jan 21, 2025
Iris is frozen - discover why

The question I have is if I run an External backup this library rotuine is called:
##Class(Backup.General).ExternalFreeze()

Is there a command I can run that shows me the Iris system is frozen due to the call to ##Class(Backup.General).ExternalFreeze()?

If the system is frozen I cannot sign into Iris terminal session.

I backup the IRIS server using Veeam. Veeam calls the "freeze" script, snapshots the server in VMWare, then calls the "thaw" script.
Veeam then backs up the VMWare snapshot.

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Here are the technology bonuses for the InterSystems "Bringing Ideas to Reality" Contest 2025 that will give you extra points in the voting:

  • Developer Experience Idea implemented - 4
  • IRIS Vector Search usage -3
  • Embedded Python usage -3
  • InterSystems Interoperability - 3
  • InterSystems IRIS BI - 3
  • VSCode Plugin - 3
  • FHIR Tools - 3
  • Docker container usage -2
  • ZPM Package Deployment - 2
  • Online Demo -2
  • Find and report a bug - 2
  • Article on Developer Community - 2
  • The second article on Developer Community - 1
  • Video on YouTube - 3
  • YouTube Short - 1
  • First Time Contribution - 3

See the details below.<--break->

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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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If you want to know if a class about a topic already exists asking a simple natural language question, it is possible now. Download and run the application https://openexchange.intersystems.com/package/langchain-iris-tool to know all about your project classes in a Chat.

Open Exchange app
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Hi Community,

We're pleased to invite you to the upcoming webinar in Hebrew:

👉 Hebrew Webinar: GenAI + RAG - Leveraging Intersystems IRIS as your Vector DB👈

📅 Date & time: February 26th, 3:00 PM IDT

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☤ Care 🩺 Compass 🧭 - Proof-of-Concept - Demo Games Contest Entry

Introducing Care Compass: AI-Powered Case Prioritization for Human Services

In today’s healthcare and social services landscape, caseworkers face overwhelming challenges. High caseloads, fragmented systems, and disconnected data often lead to missed opportunities to intervene early and effectively. This results in worker burnout and preventable emergency room visits, which are both costly and avoidable.

Care Compass was created to change that.

Open Exchange app
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Question
· Apr 25, 2025
Setting Python

Hi Guys,

I'm a newbie running IRIS in a container (IRIS for UNIX (Ubuntu Server LTS for x86-64 Containers) 2024.3 (Build 217U) Thu Nov 14 2024 17:30:43 EST) and trying to setup Python so I can start working on ML & Autosklearn,my understanding is that IRIS already comes with embedded Python but unable to do something like "import pandas as pd" in VSCode which looks like I need install a more complete version of Python or packages, so what I'm missing?

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Hey Community,

Great news for all those of you who have missed the Super Early Bird discount for the InterSystems READY 2025! You still have a chance to get an Early bird discount up until 26th of May! So don't miss you chance to participate in the event of the year.

➡️ InterSystems Ready 2025

🗓 Dates: June 22-25, 2025

📍 Location: Signia Hilton Bonnet Creek, Orlando, FL, USA

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We are receiving an ORU message and the vendor is requesting that we append a new OBX segment at the end of the message and I wanted to reach out to see what options might be available.

So far, I tried the append action in the DTL editor with a single OBX-3 field but it seems to be appending to the field directly instead of creating a new OBX. I've started looking into if whether I could use a function but wanted to first check with the experts on the Discussion here in case there's an easier way to accomplish this. Thank you.

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