I'm proud to announce the new release of iris-pex-embedded-python (v2.3.1) with a new command line interface.

This command line is called iop for Interoperability On Python.

First I would like to present in few words the project the main changes since the version 1.

A breif history of the project

Version 1.0 was a proof of concept to show how the interoperability framework of IRIS can be used with a python first approach while remaining compatible with any existing ObjectScript code.

What does it mean? It means that any python developer can use the IRIS interoperability framework without any knowledge of ObjectScript.

Example :

from grongier.pex import BusinessOperation

class MyBusinessOperation(BusinessOperation):

    def on_message(self, request):
        self.log.info("Received request")

Great, isn't it?

In this article, I will show you how one can easily create and read Microsoft Word documents using InterSystems IRIS with the leverage power of embedded Python.

Setup

First things first, let’s install the Python module called python-docx. There are a lot of modules to write MS Word files in Python. However, this one is the easiest one to use.

Just execute the following command on the terminal:

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>

Let's say you have Python including variable-length arguments methods. How can you call it from ObjectScript?

Overview

Cross-Skilling from IRIS objectScript to Python it becomes clear there are some fascinating differences in syntax.

One of these areas was how Python returns Tuples from a method with automatic unpacking.

Effectively this presents as a method that returns multiple values. What an awesome invention :)

out1, out2 = some_function(in1, in2)

ObjectScript has an alternative approach with ByRef and Output parameters.

Do ##class(some_class).SomeMethod(.inAndOut1, in2, .out2)

Where:

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())

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:

Hello,

I'm starting testing embedded python and external libraries.

When I try to use the win32api-library I get the following error :

<THROW> *%Exception.PythonException 230 ^^0^ <class 'ModuleNotFoundError'>: No module named 'win32api' -

This is my code :

So, I know that I can return a SQL Error message from my SQL Procedure written in ObjectScript, with code like this

$ cat <<EOF | irissqlcli iris://_SYSTEM:SYS@localhost:1972/USER
CREATE or REPLACE PROCEDURE test()
LANGUAGE OBJECTSCRIPT
{
 SET %sqlcontext.%SQLCODE = 400
 SET %sqlcontext.%ROWCOUNT = -1
 SET %sqlcontext.%Message = "test error message"
};

CALL test();

EOF
[SQLCODE: <-400>:<Fatal error occurred>]
[Location: <SPFunction>]
[%msg: <test error message>]

But I did not find how to do it with Python. I can't find %sqlcontext variable available there

I copied a 5 MB messages.log file to AWS where I have iris-log-viewer app deployed. I ran the test to see how it takes in IRIS code to import the lines into a persistent table:

IRISAPP>set m5mb="/home/irisowner/irisdev/messages.old_20221231.log"

IRISAPP>

IRISAPP>do ##class(otw.log.irislogreader).Test1(m5mb)
Test1 begins at 02/05/2023 12:49:30
ReadLogLines
/home/irisowner/irisdev/messages.old_20221231.log
Open
Test1 ends at 02/05/2023 12:49:34
Test1 execution time: 3.500789

select count(*) from otw_log.Log

63239

I developed iris-log-viewer on a work laptop using an older version of IRIS. My messages.log file has nearly 10k lines. I noticed it takes a couple of seconds to read messages.log file line by line, import each line into a persistent class, and display messages on my screen. I wonder if Python can speed up the process.

Applications that work with bill payments and receipts, as well as the delivery and inventory of items, generally require the use of barcodes or QR Codes. The latter is used in even broader scenarios since the QR Code can store more information than a simple bar code. Thus, it is important to have the ability to generate barcodes and QR Codes or read the data stored in them from an image or a PDF. This article will show you how to do this using Python and some of its free libraries.

We're having a problem with the way Python modules are being cached in Iris. If we modify some code and then reimport a module it is still processing the old code.

E.g. Create a python file:

helloWorld.py

def helloWorld() :
return "Hello world"

The run the following in the Iris terminal:

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