TL;DR: This article demonstrates how to run GraphRAG-style hybrid retrieval—combining vector similarity, graph traversal, and full-text search—entirely within InterSystems IRIS using the iris-vector-graph package. We use a fraud detection scenario to show how graph patterns reveal what vector search alone would miss.

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.

What is JWT?

JWT (JSON Web Token) is an open standard (RFC 7519) that offers a lightweight, compact, and self-contained method for securely transmitting information between two parties. It is commonly used in web applications for authentication, authorization, and information exchange.

A JWT is typically composed of three parts:

1. JOSE (JSON Object Signing and Encryption) Header
2. Payload
3. Signature

As I am iterating through the FHIR JSON Response from a Patient Search, I am running into an issue where the extracted values are not being popualted into the Response object that I have created. If I do a $$$LOGINFO on them they will show up in the Object log, however if I try the following for example I get an error.

What are best practices for JSON transformation in IRIS interoperability? This is for a non-healthcare use case, so any tools we happen to have around FHIR might not be available. The motivating use case is trimming down a verbose and needlessly complex REST API response to feed to an LLM - trying to reduce token usage and maybe get better results from less noisy data.

Hola amigo! 😊 Cómo estás hoy,

I would like to share a small part of my learnings from my first ever official project: POS/EDC machine integration with our billing system. This was an exciting challenge where I got hands-on experience working with APIs and vendors.

How does a Payment Machine actually work?

It's simple, start by initiating/creating a transaction, then retrieve its payment status.

Here, initiate/create refers to POST method and Retrieve refers to GET.

Hi developers!

How do you debug implementation code in .impl classes of REST.API in InterSystems IRIS?

Especially if you don't have access to globals, so no things like:

Set ^AAA="here we are"

not possible in this case.

Suppose I have the following signature of the REST.API method called as POST and containing JSON. :

What is XML?

Introducing IRIS DocDB Explorer: A Sleek UI for Managing JSON Documents in InterSystems IRIS

IRIS offers a dedicated feature for storing and retrieving JSON documents using DocDB, without requiring a predefined schema.

Hello community,

I wanted to share my experience about working on Large Data projects. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to handle massive patient data, payor data and transactional logs while working in an hospital industry. I have had the chance to build huge reports which had to be written using advanced logics fetching data across multiple tables whose indexing was not helping me write efficient code.

Here is what I have learned about managing large data efficiently.

Choosing the right data access method.

As we all here in the community are aware of, IRIS provides multiple ways to access data. Choosing the right method, depends on the requirement.

• Direct Global Access: Fastest for bulk read/write operations. For example, if i have to traverse through indexes and fetch patient data, I can loop through the globals to process millions of records. This will save a lot of time.

Set ToDate=+H
Set FromDate=+$H-1 For  Set FromDate=$O(^PatientD("Date",FromDate)) Quit:FromDate>ToDate  Do
. Set PatId="" For  Set PatId=$Order(^PatientD("Date",FromDate,PatID)) Quit:PatId=""  Do
. . Write $Get(^PatientD("Date",FromDate,PatID)),!

• Using SQL: Useful for reporting or analytical requirements, though slower for huge data sets.

The ObjectScript language has incredible JSON support through classes like %DynamicObject and %JSON.Adaptor. This support is due to the JSON format's immense popularity over the previous dominance of XML. JSON brought less verbosity to data representation and increased readability for humans who needed to interpret JSON content. To further reduce verbosity and increase readability, the YAML format was created. The very easy-to-read YAML format quickly became the most popular format for representing configurations and parameterizations, due to its readability and minimal verbosity.

Why This Matters

Managing IAM can be tedious when done manually — especially when your APIs are already well-documented using OpenAPI (Swagger) specs. Wouldn't it be great if you could automatically generate Kong services and routes directly from your OpenAPI spec?

That's exactly what this ObjectScript method does: it reads an OpenAPI 2.0 spec stored in the XData block of your spec class and generates a decK-compatible YAML file that can be used to sync your IAM configuration.

FHIR Server

A FHIR Server is a software application that implements the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard, enabling healthcare systems to store, access, exchange, and manage healthcare data in a standardized manner.

Intersystems IRIS can store and retrieve the following FHIR resources:

• Resource Repository – IRIS Native FHIR server can effortlessly store the FHIR bundles/resources directly in the FHIR repository.
• FHIR Facade - the FHIR facade layer is a software architecture pattern used to expose a FHIR-compliant API on top of an existing one (often non-FHIR). It also streamlines the healthcare data system, including an electronic health record (EHR), legacy database, or HL7 v2 message store, without requiring the migration of all data into a FHIR-native system.

What is FHIR?

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a standardized framework created by HL7 International to facilitate the exchange of healthcare data in a flexible, developer-friendly, and modern way. It leverages contemporary web technologies to ensure seamless integration and communication across various healthcare systems.

Hi folks!

Sometimes, when designing a class method and feeding it with more and more useful features, very soon the number of parameters can reach 10 and even more.

It becomes pretty difficult for users of useful methods to remember the position of the important parameter, and it is very easy to misuse the position and transfer the wrong value to the wrong parameter.

Here is an example of such a method (I asked GPT to create a method with 20 params):

ClassMethod GenerateReportWith20Params(
    pTitle As %String = "",
    pAuthor As %String = "",
    pDate As %String = "",            // e.g. 2025-09-03
    pCompany As %String = "",
    pDepartment As %String = "",
    pVersion As %String = "1.0",
    pFormat As %String = "pdf",       // pdf|html|docx
    pIncludeCharts As %Boolean = 1,
    pIncludeSummary As %Boolean = 1,
    pIncludeAppendix As %Boolean = 0,
    pConfidentiality As %String = "Public",
    pLanguage As %String = "en",
    pReviewers As %String = "",       // CSV, e.g. "Alice,Bob"
    pApprover As %String = "",
    pLogoPath As %String = "",
    pWatermarkText As %String = "",
    pColorScheme As %String = "default",
    pPageSize As %String = "A4",
    pOrientation As %String = "Portrait",
    pOutputPath As %String = "report.pdf"
) As %Status
{

// implementation
}