#ODBC

Introduction

This article is intended to be a simple tutorial on how to create ODBC connections and working with them, since I found starting with them a little bit confused, but I had amazing people to take my hand and walk me through it, and I think everyone deserves that kind of help too.
I'm going to divide each little part in sections, so feel free to jump to the one you feel the need to, although I recommend reading everything.
I'm going to use the sample data created in a previous article, Quick sample database tutorial: Samples.PersistentData, with the properties Name and Age.

It has been asked a few times recently, how one can make Laravel Framework work with InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. It's been a while since this post about Laravel and InterSystems Caché was published. To bring it up to date, the article gives a brief instruction set on how to setup and configure a Laravel project for use with InterSystems IRIS through ODBC.

What is Laravel?

Laravel is a PHP framework that is based on MVC architecture. Using Laravel simplifies and speeds up the backend development while building modern secure web applications.

Recently, the question came up while discussing the access to the data stored in IRIS from different languages with my students if it was possible to initiate the connection and get data from Cloud solution (InterSystems IRIS CloudSQL) from Microsoft Excel, not the other way around. Considering the many varied ways one can get data in Excel (import data from external sources, connecting to databases using ODBC drivers, using power queries and web queries etc.) the obvious choice was to try ODBC driver. The only task left was to try to connect to the database in the cloud using the ODBC driver.

How to create an ODBC connection on your native Windows laptop to IRIS running on a Windows VM on the same computer, test the connection, and pull data from IRIS into Excel.

Recently I learned that Excel can connect to external databases via ODBC. This includes basically any ODBC data source. Since IRIS speaks ODBC via the ODBC API, we can take advantage of the InterSystems ODBC Driver to establish an ODBC connection to IRIS on Windows that Excel can utilize.

Using SQL Gateway with Python, Vector Search, and Interoperability in InterSystems Iris

Part 3 – REST and Interoperability

Now that we have finished the configuration of the SQL Gateway and we have been able to access the data from the external database via python, and we have set up our vectorized base, we can perform some queries. For this in this part of the article we will use an application developed with CSP, HTML and Javascript that will access an integration in Iris, which then performs the search for data similarity, sends it to LLM and finally returns the generated SQL. The CSP page calls an API in Iris that receives the data to be used in the query, calling the integration. For more information about REST in the Iris see the documentation available at https://docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cl…

We're excited to continue to roll out new features to InterSystems IRIS Cloud SQL, such as the new Vector Search capability that was first released with InterSystems IRIS 2024.1. Cloud SQL is a cloud service that offers exactly that: SQL access in the cloud. That means you'll be using industry-standard driver technologies such as JDBC, ODBC, and DB-API to connect to this service and access your data. The documentation describes in proper detail how to configure the important driver-level settings, but doesn't cover specific third-party tools as - as you can imagine - there's an infinite number of them.

In this article, we'll complement that reference documentation with more detailed steps for a popular third-party data visualization tool that several of our customers use to access IRIS-based data: Microsoft Power BI.

If you're migrating from Oracle to InterSystems IRIS—like many of my customers—you may run into Oracle-specific SQL patterns that need translation.

Take this example:

SELECT (TO_DATE('2023-05-12','YYYY-MM-DD') - LEVEL + 1) AS gap_date
FROM dual
CONNECT BY LEVEL <= (TO_DATE('2023-05-12','YYYY-MM-DD') - TO_DATE('2023-05-02','YYYY-MM-DD') + 1);

In Oracle:

• LEVEL is a pseudo-column used in hierarchical queries (CONNECT BY). It starts at 1 and increments by 1.
• CONNECT BY LEVEL <= (...)

Hello Developers! 👋
I’m excited to introduce IRIS IO Utility, my submission for the InterSystems "Bringing Ideas to Reality" Contest 2025. This VS Code extension provides you an intuitive and powerful interface for importing and exporting data without leaving your IDE. The extension implements and expand this idea submitted on the Ideas Portal turning a common developer need into a real tool: seamless IO operations with any IRIS instance directly inside VS Code.

Keywords: Python, JDBC, SQL, IRIS, Jupyter Notebook, Pandas, Numpy, and Machine Learning 

1. Purpose

This is another 5-minute simple note on invoking the IRIS JDBC driver via Python 3 within i.e. a Jupyter Notebook, to read from and write data  into an IRIS database instance via SQL syntax, for demo purpose. 

Last year I touched on a brief note on Python binding into a Cache database (section 4.7) instance.

Introduction

There is a Link Procedure Wizard option within the Management Portal (System > SQL >Wizards > Link Procedure) which I had reliability issues with so I decided to use this solution instead.

Problem

You need to query an external SQL database to use the response within a namespace. This guide is assuming that you already have a working stored procedure in SSMS although you could instead use a SQL block within the operation. Stored procedures in SSMS are preferred to maintain integrity, Embedded SQL can get very confusing if you have a complicated SQL statement.

In this tutorial, I will discuss how can you connect your IRIS data platform to sql server db .

Prereq: 

• Have ODBC driver installed in your device. You can download it from here: Download ODBC Driver for SQL Server - ODBC Driver for SQL Server | Microsoft Learn. 
• Have SQL Server and IRIS installed in your device
• Have SQL Server connection Authentication enabled in SQL server

I've asked a lot of questions leading up to this, so I wanted to share some of my progress.

The blue line represents the number of messages processed.  The background color represents the average response time.  You can see ticks for each hour (and bigger ticks for each day).   Hovering over any point in the graph will show you the numbers for that period in time.

This is super useful for "at a glance" performance monitoring as well as establishing patterns in our utilization.

Here is the query used:

SELECT
    mh.name                                  AS MessageType,
    COUNT(mh.

I am writing this post primarily to gather an informal consensus on how developers are using Python in conjunction with IRIS, so please respond to the poll at the end of this article! In the body of the article, I'll give some background on each choice provided, as well as the advantages for each, but feel free to skim over it and just respond to the poll.

As most of you are probably aware, Python is currently the most popular programming language among developers around the world - and for good reason.

InterSystems FAQ rubric

The ID of the last updated record can be obtained using the SQL function LAST_IDENTITY().
* This function can be used with embedded SQL or ODBC but not with Dynamic SQL, SQL Shell, or the Management Portal's SQL interface.

Here's an example of usage with simple Embedded SQL:

Using SQL Gateway with Python, Vector Search, and Interoperability in InterSystems Iris

Part 1 - SQL Gateway

Hello

In this article we will look at the use of SQL Gateway in Iris. SQL Gateway allows Iris to have access to tables from other (external) database via ODBC or JDBC. We can access Tables or Views from various databases, such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, MySQL and others.

https://www.appeon.com/products/powerbuilder

Appeon PowerBuilder is an enterprise development tool that allows you to build data-driven business applications and components.
It is one of a suite of Appeon products that together provide the tools to develop client/server, Web, mobile, and distributed applications.

Using SQL Gateway with Python, Vector Search, and Interoperability in InterSystems Iris

Part 2 – Python and Vector Search

Since we have access to the data from our external table, we can use everything that Iris has to offer with this data. Let's, for example, read the data from our external table and generate a polynomial regression with it.

For more information on using python with Iris, see the documentation available at https://docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?KEY=AFL_epython

Let's now consume the data from the external database to calculate a polynomial regression. To do this, we will use a python code to run a SQL that will read our MySQL table and turn it into a pandas dataframe:

Hello Community! 👋
Welcome to the second part of the IRIS IO Utility series. This extension represents my submission for the InterSystems "Bringing Ideas to Reality" Contest 2025 and offers you an intuitive and powerful interface for importing and exporting data directly inside VS Code.

• You can find the extension on my GitHub page: pietrodileo/iris_io_utility
• VSIX file to install the extension on VSCode can be found on the related release page: releases: iris-io-utility

If you find this extension useful, please consider voting for me at the contest!

Problems with Strings

I am accessing IRIS databases with JDBC (or ODBC) using Python. I want to fetch the data into a pandas dataframe to manipulate the data and create charts from it. I ran into a problem with string handling while using JDBC. This post is to help if anyone else has the same issues. Or, if there is an easier way to solve this, let me know in the comments!

I am using OSX, so I am unsure how unique my problem is. I am using Jupyter Notebooks, although the code would generally be the same if you used any other Python program or framework.

Hi,

I was struggling with a procedure that was meant to receive a string and use it as a filter, I've found that since I want the procedure to do some data transformation and return a dataset, I needed to use objectScript language.

Several steps should be done in order to secure the connection through xDBC clients to an IRIS Server instance using TLS. Most of the information can be obtained from the documentation about TLS on IRIS here, about configuring the security layer for encrypted connections. In the next paragraphs we will cover an step-by-step guide on how to configure and test the connection using SQL Clients apps using ODBC and JDBC.

One of our apps uses a class query to support a ZEN Report and works just fine in that report, producing the expected results every time. We’ve since migrated to InterSystems Reports and noticed that, for a report using the same class query, 100s of extra rows with the same column values appear at its bottom.

We eliminated InterSystems Reports as the source of the problem by recreating the same “extra rows” issue with an Excel spreadsheet calling the same class query as a stored procedure.

What was the issue?

For developers building external applications, especially those using familiar technologies like C#, ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is a crucial, standardized bridge to any relational database, including InterSystems IRIS. While InterSystems offers its own native ADO.NET provider, the ODBC driver is often the most straightforward path for integration with generic database tools and frameworks.

Here is a step-by-step guide to getting your C# application connected to an IRIS instance using the ODBC driver, focusing on DSN-less connection string.

Step 1: Install the InterSystems IRIS ODBC Driver

The InterSystems ODBC driver is installed by default when you install InterSystems IRIS on a Windows machine.

• If IRIS is on the same machine: The driver is already present.
• If IRIS is on a remote server: You must download and install the standalone ODBC client driver package for your client operating system (Windows, Linux, or macOS) and bitness (32-bit or 64-bit) from WRC website if you're a client or by installing Client components and copying ODBC driver.

Once installed, you can verify its presence in the ODBC Data Source Administrator tool on Windows (look for the InterSystems IRIS ODBC35 driver).

InterSystems FAQ rubric

If multiple InterSystems products are installed on the same system, the latest version of the InterSystems ODBC driver among the installed products will remain registered in the driver manager.

You can change to any driver by changing the registry entry below.

 Please note that running RegFiles.bat does not change the ODBC driver.

The registry entry is as follows.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.INI\InterSystems ODBC35 key Driver
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBCINST.

The ideal number of table permissions to assign for your users is zero. Permissions should be granted upon sign-in based on the application used for access. For web applications, we have a simple way of doing this by appointing application roles, matching roles, and required resources in the System Management Portal.

ODBC and JDBC connections present a different problem, however, especially when third-party applications are involved. As providers of an ERP system, our customers often wish to be able to employ various software packages to integrate with or report on their data. Many of these programs are capable of running any kind of query. Yet, letting them do that can be devastating to a customer’s data.

Due to MySQL's interpretation of SCHEMA differing from the common SQL understanding (as seen in IRIS/SQL Server/Oracle), our automated Linked Table Wizard may encounter errors when attempting to retrieve metadata information to build the Linked Table.

(This also applies to Linked Procedures and Views)

When attempting to create a Linked Table through the Wizard, you will encounter an error that looks something like this:

ERROR #5535: SQL Gateway catalog table error in 'SQLPrimaryKeys'. Error: ' SQLState: (HY000) NativeError: [0] Message: [MySQL][ODBC 8.3(a) Driver][mysqld-5.5.5-10.4.

Hello Community,

Thank you all for your continued feedback and support of our ad hoc reporting platform, VDM.  There's been some questions around setting up a non-ODBC connection for InterSystems platforms.  We published a new YouTube video showing the steps necessary to connect to InterSystems Caché and InterSystems IRIS with BridgeWorks VDM. 

I was facing the same issue as Jerry faced when connecting IRIS to SQL server. My ODBC connection is configured to authenticate via windows authentication.

Configure IRIS ODBC connection with Windows authentication using a
 

How I fixed it for myself?

Root cause

• The SQL Server DSN was set to Windows Integrated Authentication.
• IRIS opens the ODBC connection via irisdb.exe, which runs under the IRIS Windows services’ logon account.
• My IRIS services were running as LocalSystem, so SQL saw the machine account <ORGNAME>\<ASSETID>$

Hi, I hope this post helps.

The bottom line: MAXLEN is relevant mostly for odbc/jdbc connections and you need to specify an appropriate value within your  tables (classes), otherwise the data might be truncated when you query it, or even fail when you try to insert data.

In OS X 10.8 and earlier, PHP was built with ODBC support, making it easy to connect to a Caché database:

$ php -r 'phpinfo();' |grep 'ODBC Support'
ODBC Support => enabled

However, this support was removed in OS X 10.9:

$ php -r 'phpinfo();' |grep 'ODBC Support'

Some people use Homebrew, MacPorts, or Fink to get their tools back. If you're comfortable coloring a little outside the lines (i.e., using sudo and the command line), you can build the odbc.so or pdo_odbc.so extension (depending on which API you prefer), and use it with Apple's version of Apache and PHP.