Whether you are accessing DeepSee for the first time ever or you are configuring DeepSee on a new instance, there are two common issues that are encountered after clicking on the “DeepSee” option in the System Management Portal.

Issue #1: Architect/Analyzer is grayed out!

Issue #2: DeepSee must be enabled before use.

Issue #1: Architect/Analyzer is grayed out!

There are two common causes for this problem.

Last week, we announced the InterSystems IRIS Data Platform, our new and comprehensive platform for all your data endeavours, whether transactional, analytics or both. We've included many of the features our customers know and loved from Caché and Ensemble, but in this article we'll shed a little more light on one of the new capabilities of the platform: SQL Sharding, a powerful new feature in our scalability story.

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.

With the release of InterSystems IRIS, we're also making available a nifty bit of software that allows you to get the best out of your InterSystems IRIS cluster when working with Apache Spark for data processing, machine learning and other data-heavy fun. Let's take a closer look at how we're making your life as a Data Scientist easier, as you're probably already facing tough big data challenges already, just from the influx of job offers in your inbox!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a video worth? Certainly more than typing a post.

Please check out my "Coding talks" on InterSystems Developers YouTube:

1. Analysing InterSystems IRIS System Performance with Yape. Part 1: Installing Yape

https://www.youtube.com/embed/3KClL5zT6MY
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Running Yape in a container.

2. Yape Container SQLite iostat InterSystems

https://www.youtube.com/embed/cuMLSO9NQCM
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Extracting and plotting pButtons data including timeframes and iostat.

Last time we deployed a simple IRIS application to the Google Cloud. Now we’re going to deploy the same project to Amazon Web Services using its Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS).

We assume you’ve already forked the IRIS project to your own private repository. It’s called <username>/my-objectscript-rest-docker-template in this article. <root_repo_dir> is its root directory.

Before getting started, install the AWS command-line interface and, for Kubernetes cluster creation, eksctl, a simple CLI utility. For AWS you can try to use aws2, but you’ll need to set aws2 usage in kube config file as described here.

Hi Developers!

Recently we launched InterSystems Package Manager - ZPM. And one of the intentions of the ZPM is to let you package your solution and submit into the ZPM registry to make its deployment as simple as "install your-package" command.

To do that you need to introduce module.xml file into your repository which describes what is your InterSystems IRIS package consists of.

This article describes different parts of module.xml and will help you to craft your own.

I will start from samples-objectscript package, which installs into IRIS the Sample ObjectScript application and could be installed with:

zpm: USER>install samples-objectscript

It is probably the simplest package ever and here is the module.xml which describes the package:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Export generator="Cache" version="25">
  <Document name="samples-objectscript.ZPM">
    <Module>
      <Name>samples-objectscript</Name>
      <Version>1.0.0</Version>
      <Packaging>module</Packaging>
      <SourcesRoot>src</SourcesRoot>
      <Resource Name="ObjectScript.PKG"/>
    </Module>
  </Document>
</Export>

IRIS and Ensemble are designed to act as an ESB/EAI. This mean they are build to process lots of small messages.

But some times, in real life we have to use them as ETL. The down side is not that they can't do so, but it can take a long time to process millions of row at once.

To improve performance, I have created a new SQLOutboundAdaptor who only works with JDBC.

BatchSqlOutboundAdapter

Extend EnsLib.SQL.OutboundAdapter to add batch batch and fetch support on JDBC connection.

Here is an ObjectScript snippet which lets to create database, namespace and a web application for InterSystems IRIS:

    set currentNS = $namespace

    zn "%SYS"

    write "Create DB ...",!
    set dbName="testDB"
    set dbProperties("Directory") = "/InterSystems/IRIS/mgr/testDB"
    set status=##Class(Config.Databases).Create(dbName,.dbProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "DB """_dbName_""" was created!",!!


    write "Create namespace ...",!
    set nsName="testNS"
    //DB for globals
    set nsProperties("Globals") = dbName
    //DB for routines
    set nsProperties("Routines") = dbName
    set status=##Class(Config.Namespaces).Create(nsName,.nsProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "Namespace """_nsName_""" was created!",!!


    write "Create web application ...",!
    set webName = "/csp/testApplication"
    set webProperties("NameSpace") = nsName
    set webProperties("Enabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("IsNameSpaceDefault") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("CSPZENEnabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("DeepSeeEnabled") = $$$YES
    set webProperties("AutheEnabled") = $$$AutheCache
    set status = ##class(Security.Applications).Create(webName, .webProperties)
    write:'status $system.Status.DisplayError(status)
    write "Web application """webName""" was created!",!

    zn currentNS

Here you'll find a simple program that uses Python in an IRIS environment and another simple program that uses ObjectScript in a Python environment. Also, I'd like to share a few of the troubles I went trough while learning to implement this.

Python in IRIS environment

Let's say, for example, you're in an IRIS environment and you want to solve a problem that you find easy, or more efficient with Python.

You can simply change the environment: create your method as any other, and in the end of it's name and specifications, you add [ Language = python ]:

There's an easy new way to add certificate authority (CA) certificates to your SSL/TLS configurations on InterSystems IRIS 2019.1 (and 2018.1.2) on Windows and Mac. You can ask IRIS to use the operating system's certificate store by entering:

%OSCertificateStore

in the field for "File containing Trusted Certificate Authority X.509 certificate(s)". Here's an image of how to do this in the portal:

Since Caché 2017 the SQL engine has included new set of statistics. These record the number of times a query is executed and the time it takes to run.

Spoilers: Daily Integrity Checks are not only a best practice, but they also provide a snapshot of global sizes and density.

Update: Many of the below utilities now offer a mode to estimate the size with <2% error on average with orders of magnitude improvements in performance and IO requirements. I continue to urge regular Integrity Checks, however there are situations where more urgent answers are needed.