Despite the fact that LOCK (docs) is a foundational part of InterSystems IRIS, responsible for concurrency, there is not a lot of discussion on the Developer Community about it. Which is understandable, considering it's stable and fairly low-level command. In this article, I will show a simple example of how to use locks with interoperability.

v2026.1 was just released as GA, and one of the features I'm looking forward to using is the DTL Explainer feature.

This allows you to take a Data Transformation, and with a click of a button get a human-readable description of the transformation (which you can also use as the basis for the DTL Description).

For complex DTLs, especially ones you didn't write yourself, or you did but a long time ago, this will allow you to get a clear quick understanding of what it's doing.

Introduction

FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is the modern standard for storing and exchanging clinical data. But once your data is in a FHIR server, how do you actually explore it? FHIR data is stored as JSON — powerful, but not practical to read directly. I wanted a tool where you could click on a patient, see their conditions, medications, lab results, and more — in a clean, readable format. So I built the FHIR Patient Viewer.

How It Works

The app runs entirely in Docker and connects directly to an InterSystems IRIS for Health FHIR server.

Working with files often starts off simple. open the file, read, and process. That approach works perfectly well, until the file happens to be an Excel file.

A Common Assumption

At first, an Excel file (.xlsx) looks like just another data file, rows, columns and values. nothing unusual. So it's natural to assume it can be read the same way as a .txt ot .csv file. But that's where things start to break.

Why Excel files behave differently

The key difference is how the data is stored:

-> .txt / .csv - plain text, line-by-line.

-> .

Introduction — The Problem with AI Streaming in ObjectScript

Today, I would like to introduce a problem I encountered and the solution I found when integrating AI APIs into an ObjectScript application. My initial tests were successful, yet somewhat frustrating.

The HTTP call worked; the request was properly sent to my LLM APIs. But then, silence... a long wait. Eventually, the entire response arrived as a single block.

Technically, it worked, but the user experience was disappointing compared to a ChatGPT session.

Since our previous announcement, we have introduced several incremental improvements to the client‑side editing experience in VS Code. These updates focus on preserving developer‑authored formatting when synchronizing with the server.

What Changed

Client‑side *.cls files previously lost certain formatting details during compilation, including keyword casing (e.g., classmethod → ClassMethod), normalization of blank lines between class members, and removal of line breaks within parameter lists.

The 2023.1.7 maintenance releases of InterSystems IRIS^® data platform,InterSystems IRIS^® for Health^TM, and HealthShare^® Health Connect are now Generally Available (GA). 

Please share your feedback through the Ideas Portal using the category Post-Release Feedback so we can build a better product together.

Documentation

You can find the detailed change lists & upgrade checklists on these pages:

• InterSystems IRIS
• InterSystems IRIS for Health
• HealthShare Health Connect

Early Access Programs (EAPs)

There are many EAPs available now. Check out this page and register to those you are interested.

Hi Community,

Preparing for InterSystems Certification examsrequires more than reading documentation. It calls for focused practice aligned with real exam objectives.If you are planning to validate your expertise in HL7, SQL, System Administration, or Development, structured preparation can make a significant difference.

🧑‍🏫 Exam preparation platform

The platform offers a large pool of practice questions mapped to certification domains, along with detailed answer explanations that point back to relevant documentation.

The 2026.1 release of InterSystems IRIS® data platform, InterSystems IRIS^® for Health^TM, and HealthShare^® Health Connect is now Generally Available (GA). This is an Extended Maintenance (EM) release.

The Interoperability user interface project has continued from 2025.1 and has incorporated many of the items that you – our customers and partners – have suggested and observed.  We are continuing to invest in feedback and updating this important user experience.  In the latest release, 2026.1 for IRIS, IRIS for Health, Health Connect and Health Connect Cloud, the BPL Editor and Message Viewer/Visual Trace applications are now available for opt-in!
NOTE:

• Existing users can switch between the modernized and standard experiences.

Hi!
We are deploying the iris image in a Kubernetes environment and the cluster state is "Hung" , looking the alerts endpoint we get 2 alerts:

[
  {
     "time":"2026-03-24T13:45:44.548Z",
     "severity":"2",
     "message":"System appears to have failed over from node a69a9f137593"
  },
  {
     "time":"2026-03-24T13:46:30.274Z",
     "severity":"2",
     "message":"Error: <PROTECT>KillAlive+1^%SYS.CDIRECT in SERVERS"
  }
]
Any idea / help where those are comming from and how to address them?

SetUp:

I have created the following Task to kick off a Ens.BusinessService to execute a SQL query and process the results

Class OSU.Workday.TerminationsTask Extends %SYS.Task.Definition
{

Parameter TaskName As STRING = "OSU - Workday Termination Update";

Method OnTask() As %Status
{
    #Dim sc as %Status
    #Dim ex as %Exception.AbstractException
    
    set sc = $$$OK

    try{
        // create the service
        #Dim tService As OSU.DataSource.Workday.TermService
        Set tServiceConfigName = "OSU.DataSource.Workday.

Hello to all the esteemed members of the InterSystems developer community in Spanish!

Although I often consult the developer community and have occasionally left a question here, this will be my first article, and what better occasion to do so than by participating in the 3rd technical article contest.

The topic I will cover in this article is the different tools that InterSystems IRIS provides us to optimize both the databases and the queries we run, as well as the new types of storage and data.

Anyone up for a round of golf?

Are you fed up of making a machine write code for you? Do you miss thinking through problems yourself? Then you are in luck, this round, I propose adding the rule of no AI use. obviously its a game of honor with no prize, so I shan't be enforcing this, but you'll know... 

Challenge:

Create a function which takes a string as a parameter, and returns the length of thelongest sequence of alternating consonants and vowels. The sequence is broken by having two vowels or two consonants in a row.

The problem

How many times have we migrated an IRIS Instance to another machine, maybe even another version, and after a few days realized we forgot that one SSL Configuration critical for a Business Operations to work? Or maybe a credential, or a lonely class in a package by itself?

The solution

The simple solution is to make a checklist¹. A checklist of the entities we have to move. But simple checklists on Word documents are often forgotten, or just ignored.

 Hi everyone,

I’m currently working with InterSystems IRIS and handling large datasets where some queries are starting to take longer than expected.

So far, I’ve tried basic indexing and reviewing query structures, which helped a bit, but I still feel there is room for improvement. My goal is to reduce response time, especially for frequently used queries in a production environment.

Hello Community!

We're pleased to invite you to the upcoming webinar in Hebrew:

👉Getting Started with OAuth 2.0 on InterSystems👈

📅 Date & time: March 25th, 3:00 PM IDT