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Hi Community!

We know that every developer has small side projects — apps where you experiment with new technologies, test ideas before implementing them in bigger solutions, or just build something fun for the sake of curiosity. But what if one of those projects could take you all the way to the InterSystems READY 2025?

We’re launching a unique opportunity: show us your passion, creativity, and love for IRIS, and win a free pass to the InterSystems READY + hotel accommodation!

The rules are simple: upload your fun IRIS-based side project to Open Exchange, and record a short inspirational video about why you should be the one to get the pass to THE event of the year and win!

Duration: April 21 - May 04, 2025

Prizes: hotel accommodation and free passes to the InterSystems READY 2025!

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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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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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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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The Good Old Days

The %Library.DynamicObject class has been in IRIS since before it became IRIS. If you have been using it since the Cache days, you may want to brush up on some of its changes.

In Cache 2018, the %Get method only had one argument. It was the key to retrieving from the JSON, meaning that if your JSON object called myObj, it would look like the following:

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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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There is a list of numbers from 1 to 190.

AllList="1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,.....,187,188,189,190"

There is a collection of sets of these values:

List(1)="3,5,6,7,9"
List(2)="1,2,6,9"
List(3)="5,8,9"
List(4)="2,4,6,8"
List(5)="4,7,9"

What is an elegant approach in Object Script to pick the least number of list items:

  • List(1)
  • List(5)
  • List(n)

That together would cover as many numbers as possible from the AllList.

Interested in best coverage over efficiency.

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It's been a while since the new UI for Productions and DTL was published as a preview and I would like to know your opinions about it.

WARNING: This is a personal opinion, totally personal and not related with InterSystems Corporation.

I'm going to start with the Interoperabilty screen:

Production screen:

The style is sober and without frills, following the line of cloud services design, I like it.

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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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When working with InterSystems IRIS, database developers and architects often face a critical decision: whether to use Dynamic SQL or Embedded SQL for querying and updating data. Both methods have their unique strengths and use cases, but understanding their performance implications is essential to making the right choice. Response time, a key metric in evaluating application performance, can vary significantly depending on the SQL approach used. Dynamic SQL offers flexibility, as queries can be constructed and executed at runtime, making it ideal for scenarios with unpredictable or highly variable query needs. Conversely, Embedded SQL emphasizes stability and efficiency by integrating SQL code directly into application logic, offering optimized response times for predefined query patterns.

In this article, I will explore the response times when using these two types of SQL and how they depend on different class structures and usage of parameters. So to do this, I'm going to use the following classes from the diagram:

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Sometimes customers need a small IRIS instance to do something in the cloud and shut it down, or they need hundreds of containers (i.e. one per end user or one per interface) with small workloads. This exercise came about to see how small an IRIS instance could be. For this exercise we focused on what is the smallest amount of memory we can configure for an IRIS instance. Do you know all the parameters that affect the memory allocated by IRIS ?

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Migrating from Oracle, MSSQL, or other purely relational database systems to a multimodel InterSystems IRIS is a strategic decision that requires careful planning and execution. While this transition offers significant benefits, including enhanced performance, scalability, and support for modern architectures, it also comes with challenges. In this article I will highlight some of the considerations connected to coding to ensure a successful migration. I will leave everything connected to an actual migration of structures and data outside the scope of this article.


First, when you're considering migrating to a different database system, you need to understand your business logic, whether it's on the side of the application (application server) or the database server. Basically, where do you have your SQL statements that you will need to potentially rewrite?

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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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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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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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Hi Community,

Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

Embedded Python Best Practices and News @ Global Summit 2024

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HicTI-bRa8M
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Over the past couple of months, I have been working on the SMART on FHIR EHR Launch to test the capabilities of IRIS for Health using two open-source apps from CSIRO: SMART-EHR-Launcher and SMART Forms App. This journey has been incredibly interesting, and I’m truly grateful for the opportunity to work on this task and explore more of IRIS for Health’s potential.

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I ask ChatGPT periodically to produce ObjectScript or plain MUMPS code for string manipulation, or for implementing known algorithms etc. Occasionally, it does make mistakes or uses non-existing class members but generally not that bad. Is there any tutorial on the subject of using AI for coding, ideally specifically for ObjectScript/MUMPS? Any AI productivity advice, or tricks you are using, or another AI flavor?

Thanks in advance,
Anna

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Hello,

Our software commonly returns a full result set to the client and we use the DataTables plugin to display table data. This has worked well, but at datasets grow larger, we are trying to move some of these requests server-side so the server handles the bulk of the work rather than the client. This has had me scratching my head in so many ways.

I'm hoping I can get a mix of general best practice advice but also maybe some IRIS specific ideas.

Some background

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