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#SQL

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SQL is a standard language for storing, manipulating and retrieving data in relational databases.

An interesting pattern around unique indices came up recently (in internal discussion re: isc.rest) and I'd like to highlight it for the community.

As a motivating use case: suppose you have a class representing a tree, where each node also has a name, and we want nodes to be unique by name and parent node. We want each root node to have a unique name too. A natural implementation would be:

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Hi, Community!

This article is an overview of SQLAlchemy, so let's begin!

SQLAlchemy is the Python SQL toolkit that serves as a bridge between your Python code and the relational database system of your choice. Created by Michael Bayer, it is currently available as an open-source library under the MIT License. SQLAlchemy supports a wide range of database systems, including PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server, making it versatile and adaptable to different project requirements.

The SQLAlchemy SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper from a comprehensive set of tools for working with databases and Python. It has several distinct areas of functionality which you can use individually or in various combinations. The major components are illustrated below, with component dependencies organized into layers:

_images/sqla_arch_small.png

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Article
· Jul 26, 2019 3m read
Dynamic SQL to Dynamic Object

Hello community! I have to work with queries using all kinds of methods like embedded sql and class queries. But my favorite is dynamic sql, simply because of how easy it is to manipulate them at runtime. The downside to writing a lot of these is the maintenance of the code and interacting with the output in a meaningful way.

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Article
· May 11, 2021 8m read
IRIS in Astronomy

In this article we are going to show the results of the comparision between IRIS and Postgress when handling Astronomy data.

Introduction

Since the earliest days of human civilization we have been fascinated by the sky at night. There are so many stars! Everybody has dreamed about them and fantasized about life in other planets.

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After so many years of waiting, we finally got an official driver available on Pypi

Additionally, found JDBC driver finally available on Maven already for 3 months, and .Net driver on Nuget more than a month.

As an author of so many implementations of IRIS support for various Python libraries, I wanted to check it. Implementation of DB-API means that it should be replaceable and at least functions defined in the standard. The only difference should be in SQL.

And the beauty of using already existing libraries, that they already implemented other databases by using DB-API standard, and these libraries already expect how driver should work.

I decided to test InterSystems official driver by implementing its support in SQLAlchemy-iris library.

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Article
· Sep 18, 2023 7m read
Vectors support, well almost

Nowadays so much noise around LLM, AI, and so on. Vector databases are kind of a part of it, and already many different realizations for the support in the world outside of IRIS.

Why Vector?

  • Similarity Search: Vectors allow for efficient similarity search, such as finding the most similar items or documents in a dataset. Traditional relational databases are designed for exact match searches, which are not suitable for tasks like image or text similarity search.
  • Flexibility: Vector representations are versatile and can be derived from various data types, such as text (via embeddings like Word2Vec, BERT), images (via deep learning models), and more.
  • Cross-Modal Searches: Vectors enable searching across different data modalities. For instance, given a vector representation of an image, one can search for similar images or related texts in a multimodal database.

And many other reasons.

So, for this pyhon contest, I decided to try to implement this support. And unfortunately I did not manage to finish it in time, below I'll explain why.

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Article
· May 20, 2016 12m read
Collations in Caché

Order is a necessity for everyone, but not everyone understands it in the same way
(Fausto Cercignani)

Disclaimer: This article uses Russian language and Cyrillic alphabet as examples, but is relevant for anyone who uses Caché in a non-English locale.
Please note that this article refers mostly to NLS collations, which are different than SQL collations. SQL collations (such as SQLUPPER, SQLSTRING, EXACT which means no collation, TRUNCATE, etc.) are actual functions that are explicitly applied to some values, and whose results are sometimes explicitly stored in the global subscripts. When stored in subscripts, these values would naturally follow the NLS collation in effect (“SQL and NLS Collations”).

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Article
· Jun 12, 2023 3m read
LangChain fixed the SQL for me

This article is a simple quick starter (what I did was) with SqlDatabaseChain.

Hope this ignites some interest.

Many thanks to:

sqlalchemy-iris author @Dmitry Maslennikov

Your project made this possible today.

The article script uses openai API so caution not to share table information and records externally, that you didn't intend to.

A local model could be plugged in , instead if needed.

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GmOwl is a solution that offers an organized and engaging learning platform. It was developed to cater to the increasing need, for learning tools providing a versatile quiz environment that meets users requirements.

The main objective of GmOwl is to deliver an user experience for individuals participating in quizzes while giving administrators comprehensive control, over content and user engagement.

GmOwl uses Java EE with MVC template, and the InterSystems IRIS database is used to store data. The InterSystems JDBC Driver is used to connect to the database.

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The Art of Mapping Globals to Classes (4 of 3)

The forth in the trilogy, anyone a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fan?

If you are looking to breathe new life into an old MUMPS application follow these steps to map your globals to classes and expose all that beautiful data to Objects and SQL.

If the above does not sound familiar to you please start at the beginning with the following:

The Art of Mapping Globals to Classes (1 of 3)

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In this article I will demonstrate the following :

  • Update ReferencesRange(OBX:7) against ObservationIdentifier(OBX:3.1)[TestCode] from database by using custom utility function
  • Update Abnormal Flag(OBX:8) against ObservationIdentifier(OBX:3.1)[TestCode] and ObservationValue(OBX:5)[Result] from database utility function
  • Route Message based on Abnormal Flag(OBX:8)

Below is the primary and transformed HL7 2.5 ORU_R01 message:

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In this article you will have access to the curated base of articles from the InterSystems Developer Community of the most relevant topics to learning InterSystems IRIS. Find top published articles ranked by Machine Learning, Embedded Python, JSON, API and REST Applications, Manage and Configure InterSystems Environments, Docker and Cloud, VSCode, SQL, Analytics/BI, Globals, Security, DevOps, Interoperability, Native API. Learn and Enjoy!

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Article
· Sep 13, 2022 8m read
CI/CD with IRIS SQL

In the vast and varied SQL database market, InterSystems IRIS stands out as a platform that goes way beyond just SQL, offering a seamless multimodel experience and supporting a rich set of development paradigms. Especially the advanced Object-Relational engine has helped organizations use the best-fit development approach for each facet of their data-intensive workloads, for example ingesting data through Objects and simultaneously querying it through SQL. Persistent Classes correspond to SQL tables, their properties to table columns and business logic is easily accessed using User-Defined Functions or Stored Procedures. In this article, we'll zoom in on a little bit of the magic just below the surface, and discuss how it may affect your development and deployment practices. This is an area of the product where we have plans to evolve and improve, so please don't hesitate to share your views and experiences using the comments section below.

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Intro

In a fast-paced digital era, effective communication is crucial. This article introduces a Java-based chat project, combining the strength of IRIS database and ChatGPT intelligence. Built on Java, it goes beyond real-time messaging, leveraging IRIS and ChatGPT for an enhanced chat experience. Also, the name of the project references the cultural classic - Star Wars.

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For the upcoming Python contest, I would like to make a small demo, on how to create a simple REST application using Python, which will use IRIS as a database. Using this tools

  • FastAPI framework, high performance, easy to learn, fast to code, ready for production
  • SQLAlchemy is the Python SQL toolkit and Object Relational Mapper that gives application developers the full power and flexibility of SQL
  • Alembic is a lightweight database migration tool for usage with the SQLAlchemy Database Toolkit for Python.
  • Uvicorn is an ASGI web server implementation for Python.

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Hi Community,

In this article, we will explore the concepts of Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL within the context of InterSystems IRIS, provide practical examples, and examine their differences to help you understand how to leverage them in your applications.

InterSystems SQL provides a full set of standard relational features, including the ability to define table schema, execute queries, and define and execute stored procedures. You can execute InterSystems SQL interactively from the Management Portal or programmatically using a SQL shell interface. Embedded SQL enables you to embed SQL statements in your ObjectScript code, while Dynamic SQL enables you to execute dynamic SQL statements from ObjectScript at runtime. While static SQL queries offer predictable performance, dynamic and embedded SQL offer flexibility and integration, respectively.

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Article
· Mar 2, 2023 3m read
Quick sample database tutorial

Introduction

This is a simple tutorial on the quickest way I found to create a sample database for any purposes such as testing, making samples for tutorials, etc.

Creating a namespace

  1. Open the terminal
  2. Write the command "D $SYSTEM.SQL.Shell()"
  3. Write "CREATE DATABASE " and the name you want for your namespace.

Now you have a new namespace in a faster way than creating it from the Management Portal - which of course offers way more configuration options.

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The last days I've work with the great new feature: LOAD DATA With this post I would like to share my first experiences with you. The following points do not contain any order or other evaluation. These are only things that I noticed when using the LOAD DATA command. It should also be noted that these points are based on the IRIS Version 2021.2.0.617 which is a preview release. So it may be that my observations do not apply to newer IRIS versions.

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This article describes a significant enhancement of how InterSystems IRIS deals with table statistics, a crucial element for IRIS SQL processing, in the 2025.2 release. We'll start with a brief refresher on what table statistics are, how they are used, and why we needed this enhancement. Then, we'll dive into the details of the new infrastructure for collecting and saving table statistics, after which we'll zoom in onto what the change means in practice for your applications. We'll end with a few additional notes on patterns enabled by the new model, and look forward to the follow-on phases of this initial delivery.

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Our team is reworking an application to use REST services that use the same database as our current ZEN application. One of the new REST endpoints uses a query that ran very slowly when first implemented. After some analysis, we found that an index on one of the fields in the table greatly improved performance (a query that took 35 seconds was now taking a fraction of a second).

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