Preview releases are now available for the 2021.2 version of InterSystems IRIS, IRIS for Health, and HealthShare Health Connect.

As this is a preview release, we are eager to learn from your experiences with this new release ahead of its General Availability release next month. Please share your feedback through the Developer Community so we can build a better product together.

 InterSystems IRIS Data Platform 2021.2 makes it even easier to develop, deploy and manage augmented applications and business processes that bridge data and application silos. It has many new capabilities including:

 Enhancements for application and interface developers, including:

• Embedded Python 
• Interoperability Productions in Python
• Updates to Visual Studio Code ObjectScript Extension Pack
• New Business Services and operations added allowing users to set and run SQL query with minimal custom coding

 Enhancements for Analytics and AI, including:

• New SQL LOAD command efficiently loads CSV and JDBC source data into tables
• Enhancements to Adaptive Analytics

 Enhancements for Cloud and Operations tasks, including:

• New Cloud Connectors make it simple to access and use cloud services within InterSystems IRIS applications
• IKO enhancements improve manageability of Kubernetes resources

 Enhancements for database and system administrators, including:

• Online Shard Rebalancing automates distribution of data across nodes without interrupting operations
• Adaptive SQL engine uses fast block sampling and automation to collect advanced table statistics and leverages runtime information for improved query planning
• Storage needs for InterSystems IRIS are reduced with new stream and journal file compression settings
• Support for TLS 1.3 and OpenSSL 1.1.1, using system-provided libraries
• New ^TRACE utility reports detailed process statistics such as cache hits and reads

More details on all of these features can be found in the product documentation:

• InterSystems IRIS 2021.1 documentation and release notes
• InterSystems IRIS for Health 2021.1 documentation and release notes
• HealthShare Health Connect 2021.1 documentation and release notes

 InterSystems IRIS 2021.2 is a Continuous Delivery (CD) release, which now comes with classic installation packages for all supported platforms, as well as container images in OCI (Open Container Initiative) a.k.a. Docker container format.  Container images are available for OCI compliant run-time engines for Linux x86-64 and Linux ARM64, as detailed in the Supported Platforms document.

 Full installation packages for each product are available from the WRC's product download site. Using the "Custom" installation option enables users to pick the options they need, such as InterSystems Studio and IntegratedML, to right-size their installation footprint.

 Installation packages and preview keys are available from the WRC's preview download site.

 Container images for the Enterprise Edition, Community Edition and all corresponding components are available from the InterSystems Container Registry using the following commands:

docker pull containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris:2021.2.0.617.0
docker pull containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/iris-ml:2021.2.0.617.0
docker pull containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/irishealth:2021.2.0.617.0
docker pull containers.intersystems.com/intersystems/irishealth-ml:2021.2.0.617.0

For a full list of the available images, please refer to the ICR documentation.

Alternatively, tarball versions of all container images are available via the WRC's preview download site.

The build number for this preview release is 2021.2.0.617.0.