IRIS Light: Reducing the Footprint of the IRIS Community Edition |

Article

Dmitry Maslennikov · 7 hr ago 5m read

The most upvoted idea on the InterSystems Ideas Portal—garnering 74 votes—requests a lightweight version of IRIS. While the platform has grown into a powerful data engine, many projects require only its SQL database capabilities. This article demonstrates how to build an unofficial, compact IRIS Community Edition image focused solely on core database functionality, reducing the image size by over 80%.

⚠️ Disclaimer

This project produces an unofficial, experimental image of InterSystems IRIS Community Edition.

Not supported or endorsed by InterSystems.
Use at your own risk. The modifications remove core platform features and may break compatibility with tools, APIs, and expected behaviors.
No warranties or guarantees apply, including fitness for production use.
Intended only for educational and experimental purposes by advanced users.

Why a Lightweight IRIS?

While IRIS today includes rich functionality—interoperability, analytics, machine learning, system management, etc.—many projects only require its core SQL capabilities. The official Community Edition Docker image is approximately:

Disk usage: 3.5–3.8 GB
Compressed size: ~1.1 GB

IRIS Light reduces that to:

Disk usage: ~575–583 MB
Compressed size: ~144–148 MB

This makes it suitable for:

Microservice or containerized SQL use
CI pipelines with faster startup and pull
Horizontal scaling where full features are unnecessary

Image Footprint Comparison

The official IRIS Community Edition images typically occupy 3.5–3.8 GB on disk, with compressed sizes around 1.1 GB:

$ docker images containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-community
IMAGE                                                                    ID             DISK USAGE   CONTENT SIZE
containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-community:latest-cd        14c6314edcc5        3.8GB         1.17GB
containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-community:latest-em        4c25627895eb       3.52GB         1.01GB
containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-community:latest-preview   424e87dbb7d8       3.81GB         1.17GB

By contrast, the stripped-down "IRIS Light" image created via this approach is approximately 8× smaller in compressed size:

$ docker images caretdev/iris-community-light
IMAGE                                                                    ID             DISK USAGE   CONTENT SIZE
caretdev/iris-community-light:latest-cd                                  ce5c2d7fa173        583MB          148MB
caretdev/iris-community-light:latest-em                                  fd33a51a0e81        575MB          144MB
caretdev/iris-community-light:latest-preview                             f10c714117da        583MB          148MB

Analyzing Image Layers with Dive

To understand and optimize the IRIS Community Edition image, we used dive, a tool for inspecting Docker image layers and identifying inefficiencies.

Before Optimization: Vanilla IRIS Community Image

The screenshot below shows the analysis of the official iris-community:latest-em image. One of the largest layers weighs in at 882 MB, containing Java, system libraries, and other runtime components not strictly required for SQL-only workloads.

And the biggest one 1.5GB, which contains mostly IRIS itself

After Optimization: IRIS Light Image

By removing unneeded packages and compacting internal IRIS storage, the final image fits into a single 320 MB layer, achieving dramatic size reduction.

How the IRIS Light Image Is Built

The process follows a multi-stage Dockerfile, starting from the standard iris-community:latest-em base. Key steps include:

1. Disable Components in Configuration

Turn off WebServer, System Management Portal, and Ensemble in iris.cpf.

2. Remove Unused Packages from Inside IRIS

Using ObjectScript within an IRIS session:

Delete packages: %SYS.ML, DeepSee, Interop, OAuth2, Net, Report, and more.
Keep only essential system libraries (e.g., %Library, %SQL, %SYSTEM).

3. Stub Classes

Some required classes (e.g., for startup) are replaced with minimal no-op implementations if needed.

4. Clean Databases

Compact, defragment key databases to reduce size

5. File System Cleanup

Remove:

Development tools
Web stack and CSP
Interoperability libraries
Python/Java support
Locale data, logs, temporary files, ODBC/JDBC drivers

6. Copy Cleaned Contents to a Fresh Ubuntu Base

The final image is built on top of ubuntu:24.04, includes only necessary files and tools, and uses tini as PID 1.

Outcome

The resulting image is around:

Compressed size: ~144–148 MB
Uncompressed disk usage: ~570–580 MB
SQL functionality: verified using the sqlalchemy-iris test suite (619 passed, 912 skipped, 0 failed)

This makes it highly suitable for:

Minimal SQL services
Lightweight dev/test containers
Embedded or edge deployment scenarios
Stateless horizontally scaled architectures

Important Limitations

No Management Portal or Web Services
The entire CSP/web stack is removed.
No Interoperability, DeepSee, iKnow, or Machine Learning
These subsystems are explicitly deleted.
No internal or external support
InterSystems provides no guarantees for this image. Compatibility and upgrade behavior are undefined.
Future IRIS versions may change startup requirements
Internal dependencies on removed packages or files may prevent future versions from working with this approach.

Conclusion

IRIS Light is a streamlined, community-driven Docker image for InterSystems IRIS, offering significant reductions in size and complexity for database-centric use cases. While not officially supported, it provides a foundation for experimentation, rapid prototyping, and where full IRIS capabilities are not needed.

Users are encouraged to review the Dockerfile, adapt it to their own needs, and understand the implications of removing core platform features.

Users are encouraged to tailor the Dockerfile further to suit their own operational and security constraints. The full build process is transparent and reproducible using only public Docker base images.

This project available here

IRIS Community Light docker images available on Docker Hub