The 2021.2 release of the InterSystems IRIS Data Platform includes many exciting new features for fast, flexible and secure development of your mission-critical applications. Embedded Python definitely takes the limelight (and for good reason!), but in SQL we've also made a massive step forward towards a more adaptive engine that gathers detailed statistical information about your table data and exploits it to deliver the best query plans. In this brief series of articles, we'll take a closer at three elements that are new in 2021.2 and work together towards this goal, starting with Run Time Plan Choice.

It's hard to figure out the right order to talk about these (you can't imagine how often I've reshuffled them in writing this article!) because they fit together in such a nice way. As such, feel free to go on a limb and read these in random order smiley.

13 2
1 752

Hi developers!

Just want to share an old but always relevant best practice on namespaces changing @Dmitry Maslennikov shared with me (again).

Consider method:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

set ns=$namespace

zn "%SYS"

// try-catch in case there will be an error

try {

// do something, e.g. config change

}

catch {}

 zn ns    ; returning back to the namespace we came in the routine

return sc

}

And with new $namespace the method could be rewritten as:

classmethod DoSomethingInSYS() as %Status

{

set sc=$$$OK

new $namespace

set $namespace="%SYS"

// do something

return sc

}

So! The difference is that we don't need to change the namespace manually as it will be back automatically once we return the method.

and we don't need try-catch (at least for this purpose) too.

4 5
0 739

Challenges of real-time AI/ML computations

We will start from the examples that we faced as Data Science practice at InterSystems:

  • A “high-load” customer portal is integrated with an online recommendation system. The plan is to reconfigure promo campaigns at the level of the entire retail network (we will assume that instead of a “flat” promo campaign master there will be used a “segment-tactic” matrix). What will happen to the recommender mechanisms? What will happen to data feeds and updates into the recommender mechanisms (the volume of input data having increased 25000 times)? What will happen to recommendation rule generation setup (the need to reduce 1000 times the recommendation rule filtering threshold due to a thousandfold increase of the volume and “assortment” of the rules generated)?
  • An equipment health monitoring system uses “manual” data sample feeds. Now it is connected to a SCADA system that transmits thousands of process parameter readings each second. What will happen to the monitoring system (will it be able to handle equipment health monitoring on a second-by-second basis)? What will happen once the input data receives a new bloc of several hundreds of columns with data sensor readings recently implemented in the SCADA system (will it be necessary, and for how long, to shut down the monitoring system to integrate the new sensor data in the analysis)?
  • A complex of AI/ML mechanisms (recommendation, monitoring, forecasting) depend on each other’s results. How many man-hours will it take every month to adapt those AI/ML mechanisms’ functioning to changes in the input data? What is the overall “delay” in supporting business decision making by the AI/ML mechanisms (the refresh frequency of supporting information against the feed frequency of new input data)?

4 0
1 726

In Studio you could open a class directly via it's name, without having to traverse the package tree with multiple clicks until arriving at the desired class.

You would Ctrl + O or (File -> Open) and be able to simply type in the class name, for example:

You press Enter, and viola - the class is opened.

How do you achieve this in VSCode?

5 1
0 709

Recently I wanted to get a list of all cached queries and their texts. Here's how to do that.

First create an SQL Procedure returning Cache Query text from a Cached Query routine name:

Class test.CQ
{

/// SELECT test.CQ_GetText()
ClassMethod GetText(routine As %String) As %String [ CodeMode = expression, SqlProc ]
{
##class(%SQLCatalog).GetCachedQueryInfo(routine)
}

}

And after that you can execute this query:

5 4
0 693

When you have more than ten thousand users in your database, it becomes time-consuming and inconvenient to assign group access rights through the standard IRIS interface. In this artilce I want to introduce you an application to automate this process.

I’ll show you how to assign and change the role lists for the users, selecting them by context, and I will also show you how to expand this application’s functionality. you know how to apply your work as an administrator and developer to the new features of the well-proven apptools software complex. With the addition of an adminLTE template, you can now quickly and easily create interface interactions for any entity and many functional modules.
The goal while developing this toolkit is to write as little JavaScript as possible as well as transfer and implement all the dynamics as much as possible in the ObjectScript.

4 0
0 678
Article
· Mar 3, 2021 4m read
Access to IRIS from Rust

What do you think If I will say you, that very soon you will be able to connect to IRIS from the application written in Rust.

What is Rust

Rust is a multi-paradigm programming language designed for performance and safety, especially safe concurrency. Rust is syntactically similar to C++, but can guarantee memory safety by using a borrow checker to validate references. Rust achieves memory safety without garbage collection, and reference counting is optional. (c) Wikipedia

6 5
2 672

What is Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI)?

Attempts to find a “bullet-proof” definition have not produced result: it seems like the term is slightly “ahead of time”. Still, we can analyze semantically the term itself – deriving that distributed artificial intelligence is the same AI (see our effort to suggest an “applied” definition) though partitioned across several computers that are not clustered together (neither data-wise, nor via applications, not by providing access to particular computers in principle). I.e., ideally, distributed artificial intelligence should be arranged in such a way that none of the computers participating in that “distribution” have direct access to data nor applications of another computer: the only alternative becomes transmission of data samples and executable scripts via “transparent” messaging. Any deviations from that ideal should lead to an advent of “partially distributed artificial intelligence” – an example being distributed data with a central application server. Or its inverse. One way or the other, we obtain as a result a set of “federated” models (i.e., either models trained each on their own data sources, or each trained by their own algorithms, or “both at once”).

2 0
1 667
Article
· Nov 29, 2021 3m read
Previewing Server Manager 3.0 for VS Code

The InterSystems Server Manager extension for Visual Studio Code lets you define connections to your servers, list their namespaces and edit or view code there. You can also launch Portal for a server.

Server Manager 3.0 improves security by becoming a VS Code Authentication Provider. It is my entry for the November 2021 InterSystems Security Contest. Click here to visit the contest page where you may decide to vote for this entry. Please ignore the clickable "Contestant" label on this article header above, as it relates to a different contest for new DC articles. If you want to support me in that contest, simply "like" this post.

7 0
1 644

Purpose

Most CloudFormation articles are Linux-based (no wonder), but there seems to be a demand for automation for Windows as well. Based on this original article by Anton, I implemented an example of deploying a mirror cluster to Windows servers using CloudFormation.I also added a simple walk through.
The complete source code can be found here.

Update: 2021 March 1 I added a way to connect to Windows shell by public key authentication via a bastion host as a one-liner.

0 0
0 642
Article
· Jan 25, 2021 2m read
Static Documentation Generators

Hi Community,

In the past, technical documentation of the source code and software products was generated in chm, pdf files and documentation generators of the programming languages themselves. This old approach had the following limitations:
1. Outdated documentation;
2. Non-interactive and difficult to consult documentation;
3. Layout unresponsive, unfriendly and not adherent to HTML;
4. Inability to customize the layout of the documentation;
5. Inability to have HTML 5 documentation online and offline.
6. Lack of Markdown support.

1 5
0 633
Article
· Dec 21, 2021 8m read
IntegratedML hands-on lab

Have you tried the InterSystems learning platform lab for IRIS IntegratedML? In that lab you can train and test a model on a readmission dataset and be able to predict when a patient will be readmitted or not, or calculate its probability of being readmitted.

You can try it without any installation on your system, all you have to do is start a virtual lab environment (Zeppelin) and play it around!

9 2
2 626
Article
· Mar 27, 2021 3m read
IRIS easy ECP workbench

Testing ECP-based applications often take quite some effort for setup and preparation.
I have created a Docker-based workbench that allows you to have it quick at hands.
And if you crash it? You just give your containers a fresh start.
The whole setup runs code-based during the start-up of your instance.
In that sense, it is also a portable coding example using ZPM and the objectscript-docker-template

see Video

4 3
0 612