Let me introduce my new project, which is irissqlcli, REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) for InterSystems IRIS SQL

• Syntax Highlighting
• Suggestions (tables, functions)
• 20+ output formats
• stdin support
• Output to files

Install it with pip

pip install irissqlcli

Or run with docker

docker run -it caretdev/irissqlcli irissqlcli iris://_SYSTEM:SYS@host.docker.internal:1972/USER

Connect to IRIS

$ irissqlcli iris://_SYSTEM@localhost:1972/USER -W
Password for _SYSTEM:
Server:  InterSystems IRIS Version 2022.3.0.606 xDBC Protocol Version 65
Version: 0.1.0
[SQL]_SYSTEM@localhost:USER> select $ZVERSION
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Expression_1                                                                                            |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| IRIS for UNIX (Ubuntu Server LTS for ARM64 Containers) 2022.3 (Build 606U) Mon Jan 30 2023 09:05:12 EST |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
1 row in set
Time: 0.063s
[SQL]_SYSTEM@localhost:USER> help
+----------+-------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
| Command  | Shortcut          | Description                                                |
+----------+-------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
| .exit    | \q                | Exit.                                                      |
| .mode    | \T                | Change the table format used to output results.            |
| .once    | \o [-o] filename  | Append next result to an output file (overwrite using -o). |
| .schemas | \ds               | List schemas.                                              |
| .tables  | \dt [schema]      | List tables.                                               |
| \e       | \e                | Edit command with editor (uses $EDITOR).                   |
| help     | \?                | Show this help.                                            |
| nopager  | \n                | Disable pager, print to stdout.                            |
| notee    | notee             | Stop writing results to an output file.                    |
| pager    | \P [command]      | Set PAGER. Print the query results via PAGER.              |
| prompt   | \R                | Change prompt format.                                      |
| quit     | \q                | Quit.                                                      |
| tee      | tee [-o] filename | Append all results to an output file (overwrite using -o). |
+----------+-------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+
Time: 0.012s
[SQL]_SYSTEM@localhost:USER>

Overview

We started to use Azure Service Bus (ASB) as an enterprise messaging solution 3 years ago. It is being used to publish and consume data between many applications in the organization. Since the data flow is complex, and one application’s data is usually needed in multi applications the “publisher” ---> ”multiple subscribers” model was a great fit. The ASB usage in the organization is dozens of millions of messages per day, while IRIS platform is having around 2-3 million messages/day.

The invention and popularization of Large Language Models (such as OpenAI's GPT-4) has launched a wave of innovative solutions that can leverage large volumes of unstructured data that was impractical or even impossible to process manually until recently.

With the latest improvements in support for Python in IRIS, and continued work on Python DB-API support by InterSystems. I've implemented IRIS support to the Django project where is Python DB-API is used to work with some other databases.

Let's try a simple application on Django, which stores its data in IRIS.

Date and Time is an important factors in our life. Because all applications are engaging based on Date/Time. But our world is split into multiple time zones. if our product is launched in the world, to maintain the history of events we are definitely required to convert all times to our local time or UTC ( Coordinated Universal Time ). As I know, many known programming languages of C#, JavaScript, Java, etc., provided the library to convert the date and time. i.e with a time zone name we can be able to convert without knowing the UTC offset.

We are happy to share interesting information with you, as well as tell you why Python is good, where it is used.

Among the most used libraries are NumPy and Pandas. NumPy (Numerical Python) is used to sort large datasets. It simplifies mathematical operations and their vectorization on arrays. Pandas offers two data structures: Series (a list of elements) and Data Frames (a table with multiple columns). This library converts data into a Data Frame, allowing you to remove and add new columns, as well as perform various operations.

grpc-iris-interop

The aim of this proof of concept is to show how the gRPC protocl can be implemented with the IRIS ineroperabilty module.

architecture

On this schema, we can see that the gRPC Service is hosted by IRIS.

This service must invoke the IRIS interoperability module. For that it transforms the protobuf messages to IRIS messages.

ipython-iris-magic

%%iris magic for IPython, can run ObjectScript command in Notebooks

It can be run in any Notebook and does not require any special setup on IRIS or the Notebook.

Demo

Native Api

I am documenting a demo of InterSystems IRIS featuring Embedded Python and Jupyter Notebook deployed on the same container, and an Embedded Python application developed on that Jupyter Notebook IDE.

With the advent of Embedded Python, a myriad of use cases are now possible from within IRIS directly using Python libraries for more complex operations. One such operation is the use of natural language processing tools such as textual similarity comparison.

Written in reply to community post for can Python create HL7 Message dynamically.

Pre-requisites and setup

Use an integration enabled namespace.
Note: USER namespace is not enabled for interoperability by default.
If following suggest create a new interoperatibility namespace to explore functionality.

# Switch to
ZN "[Interoperability Namespace Name]"

# Launch interactive Python shell:
Do $SYSTEM.Python.Shell()

Methods written in ObjectScript can use pass-by-reference arguments to return information to the caller. Python doesn’t support pass-by-reference arguments, so Embedded Python in IRIS doesn’t support them either. That's it, that's the end of the post, hope you liked it. 😉 But wait, what about the Classic Rock & Roll?

Why I've decided to write this

In my last article I've talked about returning values with Python. But returning them is simple, what can make it harder is what I'm going to talk about today: where the value is treated.

Python object in IRIS

Following the example of the last aricle, we have the method:

Named parameters can be achieved with SQLAlchemy :

from sqlalchemy import create_engine, text,types,engine

_engine = create_engine('iris+emb:///')

with _engine.connect() as conn:
    rs = conn.execute(text("select :some_private_name"), {"some_private_name": 1})
    print(rs.all())

or with native api

from sqlalchemy import create_engine, text,types,engine

# set URL for SQLAlchemy
url = engine.url.URL.create('iris', username='SuperUser', password='SYS', host='localhost', port=33782, database='FHIRSERVER')

_engine = create_engine(url)

with _engine.connect() as conn:
    rs = conn.execute(text("select :some_private_name"), {"some_private_name": 1})
    print(rs.all())