InterSystems IRIS Document Database (DocDB) offers a flexible and dynamic approach to managing database data. DocDB embraces the power of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), providing a schema-less environment for storing and retrieving data.

It is a powerful tool, enables developers to bypass a ton of boiler plate code in interaction with existing applications, serialization, pagination and integration. the seamless flow of DocDB with Interoperability Rest services and operations, gives a big leap in API production and management.

for full DocDB documentation Here. in the context of this article i will showcase a use case in which DocDB will make a perfect fit.

GmOwl is a solution that offers an organized and engaging learning platform. It was developed to cater to the increasing need, for learning tools providing a versatile quiz environment that meets users requirements.

The main objective of GmOwl is to deliver an user experience for individuals participating in quizzes while giving administrators comprehensive control, over content and user engagement.

GmOwl uses Java EE with MVC template, and the InterSystems IRIS database is used to store data. The InterSystems JDBC Driver is used to connect to the database.

Hi, developers!

Currently, I'm working on a project that requires highly dynamic event management. In the context of the Java programming language, my first instinct should be to opt for the "Observer Pattern", which is an approach to managing interactions between objects by establishing a notification mechanism. It allows multiple observers to react to changes in the state of a subject autonomously, promoting code flexibility and modularity. If you are not familiar with this design pattern, check out Wikipedia to find more information about it.

While it's natural and commonly used in certain programming languages as Java and C++, in ObjectScript, it's quite a different story.

SQLTools is a Visual Studio Code (VS Code) Extension with over 3.5 million downloads that provides connections to many of the most used databases, including InterSystems IRIS, using drivers.

As most of you probably already know, since approximately the end of 2022 InterSystems IRIS included the columnar storage functionality to its database, well, in today's article we are going to put it to the test in comparison to the usual row storage.

This article is a simple quick starter (what I did was) with SqlDatabaseChain.

Hope this ignites some interest.

Many thanks to:

sqlalchemy-iris author @Dmitry Maslennikov

Your project made this possible today.

The article script uses openai API so caution not to share table information and records externally, that you didn't intend to.

A local model could be plugged in , instead if needed.

Introduction

As the health interoperability landscape expands to include data exchange across on-premise as well as hosted solutions, we are seeing an increased need to integrate with services such as cloud storage. One of the most prolifically used and well supported tools is the NoSQL database DynamoDB (Dynamo), provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

I am often asked to review customers' IRIS application performance data to understand if system resources are under or over-provisioned.

This recent example is interesting because it involves an application that has done a "lift and shift" migration of a large IRIS database application to the Cloud. AWS, in this case.

A key takeaway is that once you move to the Cloud, resources can be right-sized over time as needed. You do not have to buy and provision on-premises infrastructure for many years in the future that you expect to grow into.

Continuous monitoring is required. Your application transaction rate will change as your business changes, the application use or the application itself changes. This will change the system resource requirements. Planners should also consider seasonal peaks in activity. Of course, an advantage of the Cloud is resources can be scaled up or down as needed.

For more background information, there are several in-depth posts on AWS and IRIS in the community. A search for "AWS reference" is an excellent place to start. I have also added some helpful links at the end of this post.

AWS services are like Lego blocks, different sizes and shapes can be combined. I have ignored networking, security, and standing up a VPC for this post. I have focused on two of the Lego block components;
- Compute requirements.
- Storage requirements.

BPL from 10,000 feet

BPL stands for Business Process Language.
This is an XML format for describing complex information orchestration interactions between systems.
InterSystems Integration engine has for two decades, provided a visual designer to build, configure, and maintain, BPL using a graphical interface.
Think of it like drawing a process flow diagram that can be compiled and deployed.

I though this is a pretty cool way of installing webterminal in an environment where I had Management Portal / Visual code access, but I had no terminal access.
zpm was already present. otherwise you could add it in the same class.

There is an interesting new feature in the recently announced 2024.1 preview, JSON_TABLE. JSON_TABLE is one of a family of functions introduced by the 2016 version of the SQL Standard (ISO Standard, published in early 2017). It allows for JSON values to be mapped to columns and queried using SQL. JSON_TABLE is valid in the FROM clause of some SQL statements.

The syntax of JSON_TABLE is quite large, allowing for exceptional conditions where the provided JSON values don't match expectations, nested structures and so on.

Artificial intelligence is not limited only to generating images through text with instructions or creating narratives with simple directions.

You can also make variations of a picture or include a special background to an already existing one.

Additionally, you can obtain the transcription of audio regardless of its language and the speed of the speaker.

So, let's analyze how the file management works.

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in Azure, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

The main issue, when deploying to Azure, is that an IRIS VIP has a requirement of IRIS being essentially a network admin, per the docs.

To get HA, IRIS mirror members must be deployed to different availability zones in one subnet (which is possible in Azure as subnets can span several zones). One of the solutions might be load balancers, but they, of course, cost extra, and you need to administrate them.

In this article, I would like to provide a way to configure a Mirror VIP without the using Load Balancers suggested in most other Azure reference architectures.