Join the contest

InterSystems Tech Article Contest

Detailed rules

InterSystems Tech Article Contest

Welcome to the 6th InterSystems technical article writing competition!

Write an article on any topic related to the InterSystems IRIS products and services.

👉 Full contest details here

Requirements

❗️ Any article written during the contest period and satisfying the requirements below will automatically* enter the competition:

  • The article must be about InterSystems products and services. 
  • The article must be in English (incl. inserting code, screenshots, etc.).  
  • The article must be 100% new (it can be a continuation of an existing article not in the contest).  
  • The article cannot be a translation of an article already published in other communities.  
  • The article should contain only correct and reliable information about InterSystems technology.
  • Article size: 400 words minimum (links and code are not counted towards the word limit).  
  • Articles on the same topic but with dissimilar examples from different authors are allowed.

* Our experts will moderate articles. Only valid content will be eligible to enter the contest.

Bonuses

If the article satisfies the requirements listed here, it gets additional Expert votes.

Contest period & Voting

February 3rd to March 2nd - publication of articles 
March 3rd to March 9th - voting time (both for Experts and DC members)

❗️ DC members can vote for published articles with Likes = votes.

Prizes & Gifts

1. Gift for everyone who enters the contest:

🎁 4-in-1 Charging Cable

2. Expert Awards – articles will be judged by InterSystems experts:

🥇 1st place: Nintendo Switch OLED / Hogwarts Icons - Collectors' Edition Lego / The X-Mansion Lego

🥈 2nd place: Nintendo Switch Lite / Lamborghini Countach 5000 Quattrovalvole Lego

🥉 3rd place: Amazon Kindle Paperwhite / Retro Radio Lego

3. Developer Community Award – article with the most likes:

🎁Amazon Kindle Paperwhite / Retro Radio Lego


To read and discuss the rules, topics & bonuses, go to:
✓ ‎Contest Announcement 
✓ InterSystems Discord Chat

February 03 - March 02, 2025
Article
· Feb 3 3m read
SQL Host Variables missing ?

Host Variables are a rather common programming feature in many implementations of SQL. 
A recent question in DC made me aware that in IRIS, Caché, Ensemble, ... 
host variables just exist within embedded SQL

>  You can supply host variables for Embedded SQL queries only. <

Related examples are included in the available Documentation

This is a description  for a workaround if you don't / can't use embedded SQL.

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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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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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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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Article
· Feb 7 4m read
IRIS %Status and Exceptions

You may encounter errors during any point of program execution, and there are several ways to raise and handle these exceptions. In this article, we'll explore how exceptions are handled efficiently in IRIS.

One of the most commonly used return types is %Status, which is used by methods to indicate success or failure. Let's begin by discussing %Status values.

Working with %Status

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