Before we start talking about databases and different data models that exist, first we'd better talk about what a database is and how to use it.

A database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. It is used to store and retrieve structured, semi-structured, or raw data which is often related to a theme or activity.

At the heart of every database lies at least one model used to describe its data. And depending on the model it is based on, a database may have slightly different characteristics and store different types of data.

To write, retrieve, modify, sort, transform or print the information from the database, a software called Database Management System (DBMS) is used.

The size, capacity, and performance of databases and their respective DBMS have increased by several orders of magnitude. It has been made possible by technological advances in various areas, such as processors, computer memory, computer storage, and computer networks. In general, the development of database technology can be divided into four generations based on the data models or structure: navigational, relational, object and post-relational.

During my search for a snapshot of a persistent object,
I met a feature that I would like to share as it could be useful in some special situations.
My trigger was to have a before- and an after-image during unit testing.

Over the past year or so, my team (Application Services at InterSystems - tasked with building and maintaining many of our internal applications, and providing tools and best practices for other departmental applications) has embarked on a journey toward building Angular/REST-based user interfaces to existing applications originally built using CSP and/or Zen. This has presented an interesting challenge that may be familiar to many of you - building out new REST APIs to existing data models and business logic.

If you need write your organization Data Architecture and map to the InterSystems IRIS, consider following Data Architecture Diagram and references to the intersystems iris documentation, see:

For those of you who might be new to IRIS, and even those who have used Cache or IRIS for some time but want to explore beyond its usually-assumed boundaries and practices, you might want to dive into this detailed exploration of the database engine that is at its heart, and discover just what you can really do with it, going way beyond what InterSystems have done with it for you.

A concurrent session in IRIS:
SQL, Objects, REST, and GraphQL

Kazimir Malevich, "Athletes" (1932)

"But of course you don't understand! How can a person who has always traveled in a horse-drawn carriage understand the feelings and impressions of the express traveler or the pilot in the air?"

Kazimir Malevich (1916)

Introduction

We’ve already addressed the topic of why object/type representation is superior to SQL for implementing subject area models. And those conclusions and facts are as true now as they have ever been. So why should we take a step back and discuss technologies that drag abstractions back to the global level, where they had been in the pre-object and pre-type era? Why should we encourage the use of spaghetti code, which results in bugs that are hard to track down, and which relies only on virtuoso developer skills?

There are several arguments in favor of transmitting data via SQL/REST/GraphQL-based APIs as opposed to representing them as types/objects:

Several years ago everyone got mad about BigData – nobody knew when smallish data will become BIGDATA, but all knows that it’s trendy and the way to go.

Hey developers!

Sometimes we need to insert or refer to the data of classes directly in globals.

And maybe a lot of you expect that data structure of global with records is:

^Sample.Person(Id)=$listbuild("",col1,col2,...,coln).

And this article is a heads up, that this is not always true, don't expect it as granted!

Beginning - see Part 1.

3. Variants of structures when using globals

A structure, such as an ordered tree, has various special cases. Let's take a look at those that have practical value for working with globals.

3.1 Special case 1. One node without branches

In many projects I was faced with storing hierarchical data (tree) in classes.
By tree, I mean such data, where each node has a parent node — an object of the same class.
Many examples of such data can be given. For example, a catalog in the online store. Suppose that this online store sells books, in this case, the category tree might look like this:

Hey community! How are you doing?

I hope to find everyone well, and a happy 2022 to all of you!

Over the years, I've been working on a lot of different projects, and I've been able to find a lot of interesting data.

But, most of the time, the dataset that I used to work with was the customer data. When I started to join the contest in the past couple of years, I began to look for specific web datasets.

I've curated a few data by myself, but I was thinking, "This dataset is enough to help others?"

Process-private Globals can be used as a data global in storage definition. That way, each process can have its own objects for the class with ppg storage. For example lets define a pool, which can:

• add elements to a pool (ignoring duplicates)
• check if an element exists in the pool

Here's the class:

Headache-free stored objects: a simple example of working with InterSystems Caché objects in ObjectScript and Python

Neuschwanstein Castle

Tabular data storages based on what is formally known as the relational data model will be celebrating their 50th anniversary in June 2020. Here is an official document – that very famous article. Many thanks for it to Doctor Edgar Frank Codd. By the way, the relational data model is on the list of the most important global innovations of the past 100 years published by Forbes.

On the other hand, oddly enough, Codd viewed relational databases and SQL as a distorted implementation of his theory. For general guidance, he created 12 rules that any relational database management system must comply with (there are actually 13 rules). Honestly speaking, there is zero DBMS's on the market that observes at least Rule 0. Therefore, no one can call their DBMS 100% relational :) If you know any exceptions, please let me know.

The InterSystems IRIS has functions that allows create DIWK digital services. A few products have the ability to transform data into wisdom, according to the following pyramid.