#ObjectScript

Abstract

Common Table Expressions (CTEs) provide a structured framework for defining reusable intermediate result sets within SQL statements. InterSystems IRIS implements CTEs via the WITH clause, enabling clearer query composition and modular analytical processing while remaining fully integrated with the IRIS cost-based optimizer.

This article explores the semantics of CTEs in InterSystems IRIS, explains their interaction with query optimization, discusses appropriate deployment scenarios, and presents executable examples illustrating practical patterns for production environments.

For those who learned Caché ObjectScript from scratch: what kind of personal or practice projects did you build to get comfortable with the language? I come from a C# background and I'm looking for project ideas that are small enough to be feasible but meaningful enough to actually teach the core COS concepts.

IRIS 2026.1 provided Partitioned Tables as a new option for large data sets
It's a great improvement as it offers standardization of this feature.

Though:
It was possible also before, matching requirements and leaving room for creativity.
less elegant with a bit more coding and fewer automatisms.

Many organizations that operate systems built on legacy technology stacks are facing significant support and maintenance complexities. They are eager to modernize, but the transition is usually prohibitively complex and expensive. These challenges apply to virtually any legacy tech, while InterSystems-based systems have their own unique nuances.

Key modernization challenges include:

• Refactoring massive amounts of code, including identifying and removing obsolete "dead code."
• Managing complex business logic accumulated organically over decades.

For those of you that weren't at READY last week, you may have missed the exciting announcement that the Early Access Program for AI Hub is officially open. It was announced during an amazing demo from @Benjamin De Boe and @Jeff Fried, I recommend catching up with this demo when the recording is released!  I had the opportunity to play with AI Hub in advance, and thought I might share an introduction with the community.

Abstract

Solar irradiance forecasting is critical for grid stability in photovoltaic (PV) power plants. This article replicates and extends the methodology of Lara-Benítez et al. (2023) "Short-term solar irradiance forecasting in streaming with deep learning" replacing the original offline simulation with a fully operational streaming pipeline built on InterSystems IRIS. We leverage IRIS Interoperability Productions as the streaming backbone, Embedded Python to run MLP, LSTM, and CNN deep learning models, and IntegratedML as an AutoML baseline.

As an experiment in agentic coding in ObjectScript I'm using VS Code to try and create an implementation of an SFTP server.

SFTP is built on top of SSH, so the first phase involves implementing an SSH server. While working on the KEX part of that the agent (using GPT-5.3-Codex) reported:

1. IRIS has what we already need for signing and hashing: RSASHASign, RSASHAVerify, RSAGetLastError, SHAHash, SHA1Hash, SHA3Hash.
2. It does not list a Diffie-Hellman key exchange or modular exponentiation API in %SYSTEM.Encryption.

It then offered these options:

1. Keep using IRIS APIs for cert/key/sign/hash.