Dynamic Entities (objects and arrays) in IRIS are incredibly useful in situations where you are having to transform JSON data into an Object Model for storage to the database, such as in REST API endpoints hosted within IRIS. This is because these dynamic objects and arrays can easily serve as a point of conversion from one data structure to the other.

In the previous article, we examined how we can use the %CSP.Request and %CSP.Response classes to test a REST API without having the API fully set up and accessible across a network with an authentication mechanism. In this article, we will build on that foundation to perform some simple unit testing of one of our REST API methods.

The unit testing framework requires a couple of setup steps before we can use it. First, we have to ensure that the unit testing portion of the management portal is enabled so we can review the results of our tests.

Hi all,

I've created a method to calculate the age of a person, or the age of a process, contract or other stuff as you want.

/// Calculate the age from date of birth and other date (by default shoud be today).
/// <b>dateOfBird</b> Date of birth in cache format. ie. $ZDH("1972-01-01",3)
/// <b>day</b> Date to calculate to. ie: $H
ClassMethod AgeAt(dateOfBirth, day) As %Integer{
    quit:dateOfBirth=""
    quit:day=""
    
    set yeardob=$SYSTEM.SQL.DATEPART("year",dateOfBirth)
    set yearday=$SYSTEM.SQL.

If you work with Productions, highlighting connections between Business Hosts is a very convenient feature, allowing developers to get a visual representation of a data flow.

This feature works by default with all system Business Hosts. If a user writes their own Business Services, Processes, or Operations, they must implement the OnGetConnections method for this functionality to work with their custom Business Hosts (or use Ens.DataType.ConfigName properties for connections).
That said, the SMP shows only the first layer of connections of the selected Business Host. Sometimes, we need to get connections of connections recursively to build a complete data flow graph. Or we might need this connection information to check which downstream systems might be affected by a change upstream.

Senior engineering is defined not by the volume of code produced, but by the strategic avoidance of it. In complex integration environments, the tendency to utilize general-purpose libraries for every niche requirement introduces unnecessary overhead. True architectural maturity requires a commitment to "minimalist tooling"—prioritizing resilient, battle-tested system utilities over custom logic. This assessment examines our PGP encryption/decryption pipeline to demonstrate how shifting from application-level libraries to OS-native delegation enhances system durability.

When working with InterSystems Interoperability (Iris / Health Connect / Ensemble), configuration data is often spread across many production items: services, processes, operations, adapters, and their settings.

A common operational or security need is to answer questions like:

• Which interfaces reference file system paths?
• Where are directories, network shares, or absolute paths configured?
• Can I quickly audit or document this information across all my productions?

The ObjectScript utility below solves exactly that problem by exporting selected configuration settings into a CSV file.

An extension “extends” or enhances a FHIR resource or a data element in a custom way. The extension can be added to the root of a resource, such as “Patient.ethnicity” in US Core profile, and they can be added to individual elements such as HumanName, Address or Identifier.

Did you know that you can also add an extension to a primitive data type?

Primitives usually store a single item and are the most basic element in FHIR. For example: "Keren", false, 1234, 12/08/2024 etc.

One of the newest features of .Net core 10 with C# 14 is the file-based apps. This feature allows you to execute C# code in a simple .cs file without the need to create a solution, a project, or any of the related structure.

For example you can create a script.cs file using the notepad with the content: 

Console.WriteLine(“This is a script in c#.”);

Then in the command line or the terminal you execute the command:

dotnet run script.cs

There is plenty of information about this new feature of .net 10.

When I started my journey with InterSystems IRIS, especially in Interoperability, one of the initial and common questions I had was: how can I run something on an interval or schedule? In this topic, I want to share two simple classes that address this issue. I'm surprised that some similar classes are not located somewhere in EnsLib. Or maybe I didn't search well? Anyway, this topic is not meant to be complex work, just a couple of snippets for beginners.

ObjectScript doesn't include any built-in method for appending one JSON dynamic array to another. Here's a code snippet I use that's equivalent to the JavaScript concat() method.

Call it with any number of arguments to concatenate them into a new array. If an argument is a dynamic array, its elements will be added. Otherwise the argument itself will be added.

ClassMethod ConcatArrays(pArgs.) As %DynamicArray
{
	set outArray = ##class(%DynamicArray).%New()
	for i=1:1:pArgs {
		set arg = pArgs(i)
		if ($IsObject(arg) && arg.%IsA("%DynamicArray")) {
			set iter = arg.

One of the most common kinds of integration we are asked to do is emailing. One of the most typical email services our customers use is Microsoft’s Office 365. After setting up the right configuration on the Microsoft side, we can email from IRIS with two HTTP requests. By the end of this article, we will be able to send an email with an attachment through our Microsoft 365 service!

Microsoft’s REST API, called Graph, allows you to do a lot of things within Microsoft’s various apps, and it is precisely what we will employ to send our email.

Dear community, I have a confession to make. I have not gotten over Zen yet. Alas, all good things must come to an EOF, so I am currently learning about Angular. I am working on proving to myself that with the right back end and Angular components, I can deliver to myself and my team a very Zen-like experience in this environment. Since this is my first attempt, here is a fair warning: I will be providing some rather large code samples before discussing them. Please warm up your mouse and hand for extensive upcoming scrolling!

Do not let the title of this article confuse you; we are not planning to take the InterSystems staff out to a fine Italian restaurant. Instead, this article will cover the principles of working with date and time data types in IRIS. When we use these data types, we should be aware of three different conversion issues:

1. Converting between internal and ODBC formats.
2. Converting between local time, UTC, and Posix time.
3. Converting to and from various date display formats.

As we keep updating our software, we often realize that we require more and more modern solutions. So far, only one major piece of our software relies on reading barcodes in documents and images. Since Cache did not have a means of reading barcodes in the past, we have always achieved our goals by using a Visual Basic 6 application. However, it is no longer an ideal solution because it is currently complicated to maintain it. IRIS also lacks this capability, but it has recently got an option that makes up for it: embedded Python!

Many programming languages use the try-and-catch construct to handle runtime errors gracefully. If the code within the try block encounters an error, it will throw an exception to the catch block, where the error handling occurs. Today we will dive into the ObjectScript implementation of this construct and discuss some ways to clean things up.

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:

SELECT Routine, test.CQ_GetText(Routine)
FROM %SQL_Manager.CachedQueryTree()

And get a list of Cached Queries:

We have a yummy dataset with recipes written by multiple Reddit users, however most of the information is free text as the title or description of a post. Let's find out how we can very easily load the dataset, extract some features and analyze it using features from OpenAI large language model within Embedded Python and the Langchain framework.

Loading the dataset

First things first, we need to load the dataset or can we just connect to it?

The traditional use of an IRIS production is for an inbound adapter to receive input from an external source, send that input to an IRIS service, then have that service send that input through the production.

With a custom inbound adapter though, we can make an IRIS production do more. We can use an IRIS production to process data from our own database without any external trigger.

 In our previous article, we explored how to send emails through Microsoft 365 using the Graph API. Since then, an anonymous client reached out to me about setting up some other methods of notifications through that API. He was particularly interested in Outlook’s tasks and calendar events. 

If you still have your client ID, client secret, and application ID from the last exercise, you may continue utilizing them. We will reuse the globals we stored from before with the GetToken method. Most of the setup in Microsoft Entra will not need to be repeated.

I came up with a challenge for myself to come up with a way to make a variable watch itself for a certain value and do something when it hits that value without having to check it every time something touches it. Basically, a way to say "if at any point during the execution of this code, if x = 0 (or whatever the condition is) do this thing." The class I ended up with watches a %Status:

Class User.WatchedStatus Extends %RegisteredObject
{
Property sc As %Status [ InitialExpression = 1, SqlComputeCode = {set {*} = ##class(User.WatchedStatus).

Hi, developers!

Currently, I'm working on a project that requires highly dynamic event management. In the context of the Java programming language, my first instinct should be to opt for the "Observer Pattern", which is an approach to managing interactions between objects by establishing a notification mechanism. It allows multiple observers to react to changes in the state of a subject autonomously, promoting code flexibility and modularity. If you are not familiar with this design pattern, check out Wikipedia to find more information about it.

While it's natural and commonly used in certain programming languages as Java and C++, in ObjectScript, it's quite a different story.

The ideal number of table permissions to assign for your users is zero. Permissions should be granted upon sign-in based on the application used for access. For web applications, we have a simple way of doing this by appointing application roles, matching roles, and required resources in the System Management Portal.

ODBC and JDBC connections present a different problem, however, especially when third-party applications are involved. As providers of an ERP system, our customers often wish to be able to employ various software packages to integrate with or report on their data. Many of these programs are capable of running any kind of query. Yet, letting them do that can be devastating to a customer’s data.

Now, let’s say you can’t access the terminal or simply you just rather execute it from a web interface. In this article, I will show you how to execute terminal commands from a simple web page.

For example, in the image below you see how we execute $zv on a webpage:

This is mostly possible due to the XECUTE command in Caché ObjectSCript. This command takes a string as a parameter and tries to execute it. This is the command used from the webpage, to execute what is being passed from the left navigation menu.

This article contains three snippets of code.

If Iris does propose to create keys following a sequence, how can we obtain a sequential number in another context?

In my case, I automatically create care centers, and I want to set them a number like:

APP-DD-999

APP = Name of the application used by the center
DD = center department number
999: sequential number in the department
It is of course possible that centers will be created in competition, so this possible competition must be managed.

My first approach was to use a persistent class and create a new object to retrieve its id, but this involves creating as many classes as departments.

Hello developers,

In this article, I'll show you how to run code at compile time with ObjectScript macros.

Here's a use case that recently led me to use this feature:

As part of a medical application developed for more than 20 years, we have a large number of parameters. Although we have procedures for documenting these settings, it can be helpful to have a quick view of which settings are actually used by the application code.

To get this view, we could search the code with regular expressions.

NOTE:  This content was originally presented at the InterSystems Global Summit in 2014, however related topics often come up on the Developer Community so I have decided to turn this into an article for easier reference and discussion.  However, much of the content was pulled directly from the presentation slides so the article format resembles that of a PPT deck more than paragraphs.

Introduction

Teams that deal with many environments (e.g. for development, testing and production) multiplied by many systems (e.g.

The following code snippet uses GZIP to compress/decompress a file. Choose a file by specifying a file path in the "filename" variable.

Class objectscript.GZIP Extends %RegisteredObject
{
	classmethod test() {
		//Export Global(s) uncompressed
		set filename="C:\Temp\myglobal.xml"
		do $System.OBJ.Export("^oddEXTR.gbl",filename)
		//Open exported Globals
		set uncompressed = ##class(%FileBinaryStream).%New()
		set uncompressed.Filename=filename
		Set compressed = "C:\temp\mycomglobal.

This article will describe and include an example of how to embed an external PDF file into an HL7 segment, specifically ADT_A01:2.3.1 OBX().  This can be useful when attempting to insert pictures or other external data into an HL7 message.  In this example, the name of the PDF file to be embedded is provided in the incoming HL7 message in OBX(1):ObservationValue field.

The basic stipulations for this example are as follows:

1. Accept a PDF file
2. Accept an HL7 message
3. Using the name of the PDF file, embed the PDF data into the HL7 message
4. Output the message to file

Using EnsLib.

Date range queries going too slow for you?  SQL Performance got you down?  I have one weird trick that might just help you out! (SQL Developers hate this!)*

If you have a class that records timestamps when the data is added, then that data will be in sequence with your IDKEY values - that is, TimeStamp₁ < TimeStamp₂ if and only if ID₁ < ID₂ for all IDs and TimeStamp values in table - then you can use this knowledge to increase performance for queries against TimeStamp ranges.  Consider the following table:

Class User.

The topic of for/while loop performance in Caché ObjectScript came up in discussion recently, and I'd like to share some thoughts/best practices with the rest of the community. While this is a basic topic in itself, it's easy to overlook the performance implications of otherwise-reasonable approaches. In short, loops iterating over $ListBuild lists with $ListNext or over a local array with $Order are the fastest options.

As a motivating example, we will consider looping over the pieces of a comma-delimited string.