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· 9 hr ago 5m read
ClassMethods Are Not Your Friends

There seems to be a generous use of ClassMethods in ObjectScript code generally. I hope my own experiences aren't representative, but I bet they are. Forgive me for giving away the ending of this article, but in short: don't use them. Unless you can make a pretty convincing case that you have to, just never use them.1

What is a ClassMethod? In an ObjectScript class, you can define methods in two different ways: in a Method, you must instantiate an instance of the class to call the method, and in a ClassMethod, you can call the method without instantiating the class. Of course, in a ClassMethod, you don't have access to any properties of the object (because there's no object), but you can access globals (they are global, after all) and Parameters (which are class constants).

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I've modified the class file, but messages still arrive as a single line (e.g., "H|.../rQ|.../rL") instead of separate lines in the ASTM service. The <ENQ>..<EOT> header looks correct, logs show no errors, and the service receives messages fine. Is there an Ensemble 2018.1 engine setting (like line terminator handling or TCP framing) to fix the line splitting? ​

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How I Vibecoded a Backend (and Frontend) on InterSystems IRIS

I wanted to try vibecoding a real backend + frontend setup on InterSystems IRIS, ideally using something realistic rather than a toy example. The goal was simple: take an existing, well-known persistent package in IRIS and quickly build a usable UI and API around it — letting AI handle as much of the boilerplate as possible. Here is the result of the experiments.

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In InterSystems IRIS, when you compile a persistent class, you automatically get a SQL table. Sometimes, there are situations that require having a slightly (or not so slightly) different names/options in SQL compared to Object model. Here are some of the settings that you can change to make it happen.

Class-level settings

They define the "Face" of your class when it appears as a table in the SQL catalog.

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A question that quickly arises when configuring IAM (aka Kong Gateway) is how many routes should be created to reach all the business objects in an IRIS API.

A common mistake is to create one route per business object, unnecessarily multiplying the number of routes.

Let's take the example of the Supply Chain Orchestrator Data Model API:

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This is the second part of an article pair where I walk you through:

  • Part I - Intro and Quick Tour (the previous article)
    • What is it?
    • Spinning up an InterSystems IRIS Cloud Document deployment
    • Taking a quick tour of the service via the service UI
  • Part II - Sample (Dockerized) Java App (this article)
    • Grabbing the connection details and TLS certificate
    • Reviewing a simple Java sample that creates a collection, inserts documents, and queries them
    • Setting up and running the Java (Dockerized) end‑to‑end sample

As mentioned the goal is to give you a smooth “first run” experience.

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If you already know Java (or .Net) and perhaps also have used other document databases (or looking for one), but you are new to the InterSystems world, this post should help you.

InterSystems IRIS Cloud Document is a fully managed document database that lets you store JSON documents and query them with familiar SQL syntax, delivered as a cloud service managed by InterSystems.

In this article pair I’ll walk you through:

  • Part I - Intro and Quick Tour (this article)
    • What is it?
    • Spinning up an InterSystems IRIS Cloud Document deployment
    • Taking a quick tour of the service via the service UI
  • Part II - Sample (Dockerized) Java App (the next article)
    • Grabbing the connection details and TLS certificate
    • Reviewing a simple Java sample that creates a collection, inserts documents, and queries them
    • Setting up and running the Java (Dockerized) end‑to‑end sample

The goal is to give you a smooth “first run” experience.

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This article is intended as a beginner level article for people that want to learn how to use OAuth2 in their web applications natively.

There is an accompanying video/demo that may be helpful here:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/4mfWQwcKcMI
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and you can reproduce this locally with the Open Exchange application attached.

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Modern platforms usually treat observability as three core signals:

  • Metrics
  • Logs
  • Traces

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is the standard way to produce and ship all three signals. This article explains a practical setup for InterSystems IRIS running in Docker Compose, with a full local observability stack:

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As applications grow, every database eventually hits scaling limits. Whether it's storage capacity, concurrent users, query throughput, or I/O bandwidth, single-server architectures have inherent constraints. This guide explains fundamental approaches to database scalability and shows how InterSystems IRIS implements these patterns to support enterprise-scale workloads.

We'll explore two complementary scaling strategies: horizontal scaling for user volume (distributing computational load) and sharding for data volume (partitioning datasets). Understanding the general principles behind these approaches will help you make informed decisions about when and how to scale your IRIS applications.

The examples in this guide use InterSystems IRIS in Docker containers.

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