Introduction

A REST API (Representational State Transfer) is an interface that allows different applications to communicate with each other through the HTTP protocol, using standard operations such as GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. REST APIs are widely used in software development to expose services accessible by other applications, enabling integration between different systems.

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Unlike the movie mentioned in the image (for those who don't know, Matrix, 1999), the choice between Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL is not a choice between truth and fantasy, but it is still a decision to be made. Below, I will try to make your choice easier.

If your need is interactions between the client and the application (and consequently the database), Dynamic SQL may be more appropriate, as it "adapts" very easily to these query changes. However, this dynamism has a cost: with each new query, it is remodeled, which can have a higher cost to execute. Below is a simple example of a Python code snippet.

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Monitoring your IRIS deployment is crucial. With the deprecation of System Alert and Monitoring (SAM), a modern, scalable solution is necessary for real-time insights, early issue detection, and operational efficiency. This guide covers setting up Prometheus and Grafana in Kubernetes to monitor InterSystems IRIS effectively.

This guide assumes you already have an IRIS cluster deployed using the InterSystems Kubernetes Operator (IKO), which simplifies deployment, integration and mangement.

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In the world of APIs, REST is very extended. But what happens when you need more flexibility in your data-fetching strategies? For instance letting the client to choose what fields is going to receive. Enter GraphQL, a query language for your APIs that provides a flexible alternative to REST.

In this post, we will:

  • Compare REST and GraphQL.
  • Dive into the basics of GraphQL: Queries, Mutations, and HTTP.
  • Build a simple GraphQL server implementation using Graphene, SQLAlchemy, and Flask over data in InterSystems IRIS.
  • Explore how to deploy your GraphQL server as a WSGI application in IRIS.
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Article
· Sep 25, 2024 1m read
Same old terminal but in web

We have Webterminal around for quite a while, but it was limited, not all features worked there. There was no shell support or the latest feature as embedded Python support. There are some issues with tools that require programmer mode. Basic Authorization, not as handy as simple login page, where you could have options to add own login page, in case if you would wish to change the way how to login to the application, such as using SSO.

With the original iris terminal, wrapped into a web form, using most used in the web world xterm.js, used in tools like VSCode as well, with some magic from Python, which helped with interprocess tty. We can get the the terminal in the web, in the full capacity.

iTerm

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InterSystems Official
· Mar 27 4m read
2025.1 Modernizing Interoperability User Experience

The Interoperability user interface now includes modernized user experiences for the DTL Editor and Production Configuration applications that are available for opt-in in all interoperability products. You can switch between the modernized and standard views. All other Interoperability screens remain in the Standard user interface. Please note that changes are limited to these two applications and we identify below the functionality that is currently available.

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Learning LLM Magic

The world of Generative AI has been pretty inescapable for a while, commercial models running on paid Cloud instances are everywhere. With your data stored securely on-prem in IRIS, it might seem daunting to start getting the benefit of experimentation with Large Language Models without having to navigate a minefield of Governance and rapidly evolving API documentation. If only there was a way to bring an LLM to IRIS, preferably in a very small code footprint....

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As we all know, InterSystems is a great company.

Their products can be just as useful as they are complex.

Yet, our pride sometimes prevents us from admitting that we might not understand some concepts or products that InterSystems offers for us.

Today we are beginning a series of articles explaining how some of the intricate InterSystems products work, obviously simply and clearly.

In this essay, I will clarify what Machine Learning is and how to take advantage of it.... because this time, you WILL KNOW for sure what I am talking about.

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From the previous article, we identified some issues when working with JSON in SQL.

IRIS offers a dedicated feature for handling JSON documents, called DocDB.

InterSystems IRIS® data platform DocDB is a facility for storing and retrieving database data. It is compatible with, but separate from, traditional SQL table and field (class and property) data storage and retrieval. It is based on JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) which provides support for web-based data exchange. InterSystems IRIS provides support for developing DocDB databases and applications in REST and in ObjectScript, as well as providing SQL support for creating or querying DocDB data.

By its nature, InterSystems IRIS Document Database is a schema-less data structure. That means that each document has its own structure, which may differ from other documents in the same database. This has several benefits when compared with SQL, which requires a pre-defined data structure.

The word “document” is used here as a specific industry-wide technical term, as a dynamic data storage structure. “Document”, as used in DocDB, should not be confused with a text document, or with documentation.

Let's explore how DocDB can help store JSON in the database and integrate it into projects that rely solely on xDBC protocols.

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Thirteen years ago, I attained dual undergraduate degrees in electrical engineering and math, then promptly started full-time at InterSystems using neither. One of my most memorable and stomach-churning academic experiences was in Stats II. On an exam, I was solving a moderately difficult confidence interval problem. I was running out of time, so (being an engineer) I wrote out the definite integral on the exam paper, punched it into my graphing calculator, wrote an arrow with “calculator” over it, then wrote the result.

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Article
· Jul 16, 2024 6m read
Method or Class Method?

For programmers new to ObjectScript, one question will inevitably arise: “What is the difference between methods and class methods?” A typical answer would be: “A class method applies to a class, but a method applies to an instance of that class.” While that answer is correct, it lacks important information on how these methods di

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What is TLS?

TLS, the successor to SSL, stands for Transport Layer Security and provides security (i.e. encryption and authentication) over a TCP/IP connection. If you have ever noticed the "s" on "https" URLs, you have recognized an HTTP connection "secured" by SSL/TLS. In the past, only login/authorization pages on the web would use TLS, but in today's hostile internet environment, best practice indicates that we should secure all connections with TLS.

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After so many years of waiting, we finally got an official driver available on Pypi

Additionally, found JDBC driver finally available on Maven already for 3 months, and .Net driver on Nuget more than a month.

As an author of so many implementations of IRIS support for various Python libraries, I wanted to check it. Implementation of DB-API means that it should be replaceable and at least functions defined in the standard. The only difference should be in SQL.

And the beauty of using already existing libraries, that they already implemented other databases by using DB-API standard, and these libraries already expect how driver should work.

I decided to test InterSystems official driver by implementing its support in SQLAlchemy-iris library.

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Updated 2/27/25

Hi Community,

You can unlock the full potential of InterSystems IRIS—and help your team onboard—with the full range of InterSystems learning resources offered online and in person, for every role in your organization. Developers, system administrators, data analysts, and integrators can quickly get up to speed.

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Motivation

I didn't know about ObjectScript until I started my new job. Objectscript isn't actually a young programming language. Compared to C++, Java and Python, the community isn't as active, but we're keen to make this place more vibrant, aren't we?

I've noticed that some of my colleagues are finding it tricky to get their heads around the class relationships in these huge projects. There aren't any easy-to-use modern class diagram tool for ObjectScript.

Related Work

I have tried relavant works:

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Article
· Sep 11, 2024 9m read
Dates with InterSystems

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.

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Article
· Aug 19, 2024 4m read
Accessing Azure Blob Storage

Accessing an Azure cloud storage to upload/download blobs is quite easy using the designated %Net.Cloud.Storage.Client class API methods, or using the EnsLib.CloudStorage.* inbound/outbound adaptors.

Note that you'll need to have the %JavaServer External Language Server up and running to use the cloud storage API or adaptors, since they both use the PEX framework using the Java Server.

Here is a quick summary:

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Introduction

As AI-driven automation becomes an essential part of modern information systems, integrating AI capabilities into existing platforms should be seamless and efficient. The IRIS Agent project showcases how generative AI can work effortlessly with InterSystems IRIS, leveraging its powerful interoperability framework—without the need to learn Python or build separate AI workflows from scratch.

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Article
· May 12 7m read
An Overview of Database Degrade

Introduction

Hello! In this article, I will be discussing database degrade, a type of data integrity issue one can face when using IRIS. First, I will be going over a review of the structure of IRIS databases. I'll then discuss how database degrade can manifest and common causes of degrade issues. I'll then conclude with general tips we give our customers about how to prevent or prepare for database degrade issues.

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This article describes a significant enhancement of how InterSystems IRIS deals with table statistics, a crucial element for IRIS SQL processing, in the 2025.2 release. We'll start with a brief refresher on what table statistics are, how they are used, and why we needed this enhancement. Then, we'll dive into the details of the new infrastructure for collecting and saving table statistics, after which we'll zoom in onto what the change means in practice for your applications. We'll end with a few additional notes on patterns enabled by the new model, and look forward to the follow-on phases of this initial delivery.

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