In the previous article, we saw in detail about Connectors, that let user upload their file and get it converted into embeddings and store it to IRIS DB. In this article, we'll explore different retrieval options that IRIS AI Studio offers - Semantic Search, Chat, Recommender and Similarity. 

New Updates  ⛴️ 

• Added installation through Docker. Run `./build.sh` after cloning to get the application & IRIS instance running in your local
• Connect via InterSystems Extension in vsCode - Thanks to @Evgeny.

With the release of InterSystems IRIS Cloud SQL, we're getting more frequent questions about how to establish secure connections over JDBC and other driver technologies. While we have nice summary and detailed documentation on the driver technologies themselves, our documentation does not go as far to describe individual client tools, such as our personal favourite DBeaver. In this article, we'll describe the steps to create a secure connection from DBeaver to your Cloud SQL deployment.

Introduction

InterSystems IRIS allows you to build REST APIs using ObjectScript classes and the %CSP.REST framework. This enables the development of modern services to expose data for web apps, mobile apps, or system integrations.

In this article, you'll learn how to create a basic REST API in InterSystems IRIS, including:

• A persistent data class
• A REST class with GET and POST methods
• A web application to expose the API

• A full demonstration using Docker

I need to reproduce a table (in fact a view, but let's start with a simple table 😊) in IRIS as the currently used in Oracle.

I need to expose/project one column to JDBC as CLOB, in my class I have the corresponding property defined as:

Property GlobStream As %Stream.GlobalCharacter;

In JDBC this column is projected as LONGVARCHAR, this is compliant with the documentation but I need to project it as CLOB.

In addition, I'm no expert in JDBC but wit seems that LONGVARCHAR has a Maximum Length 32,700 characters in JDBC, not quite enough for an arbitrary stream.

Why do these clauses affect SQL performance?

select ID from some_table where row_status in ('I','U') order by ID limit 5 - makes the query infinite select top 10 ID from some_table where row_status in ('I','U') order by ID - the same select ID from some_table where row_status in ('I','U') order by ID - is fast

Actually there are no rows in the table having row_status 'I' or 'U'.

The 2025.1.3 maintenance releases of InterSystems IRIS^® data platform, InterSystems IRIS^® for Health, and InterSystems Health Connect™ are now Generally Available (GA).

Hello everyone,

My team lead mentioned that users can sometimes create globals directly without associating them with tables or classes. In this case, these globals would not be accessible via SQL.

Is this correct? Can a global exist independently in this way, and if so, is there a specific approach to access or manage them without SQL?

10:47 AM — Jose Garcia's creatinine test results arrive at the hospital FHIR server. 2.1 mg/dL — a 35% increase from last month.

What happens next?

• Most systems: ❌ The result sits in a queue until a clinician reviews it manually — hours or days later.
• This system: 👍 An AI agent evaluates the trend, consults clinical guidelines, and generates evidence-based recommendations — in seconds, automatically.

No chatbot. No manual prompts. No black-box reasoning.

This is event-driven clinical decision support with full explainability:

✅ Triggered automatically by FHIR events ✅ Multi-agent reasoning (context, guidelines, recommendations) ✅ Complete audit trail in SQL (every decision, every evidence source) ✅ FHIR-native outputs (DiagnosticReport published to server)

Built with:

• InterSystems IRIS for Health — Orchestration, FHIR, persistence, vector search
• CrewAI — Multi-agent framework for structured reasoning

You'll learn: 🖋️ How to orchestrate agentic AI workflows within production-grade interoperability systems — and why explainability matters more than accuracy alone.

1-command only required for an entire IRIS instance for Data Science projects, and leveraging this to compare query methods' speed (Dynamic SQL, Pandas Query, and Globals).

Before joining InterSystems, I worked in a team of web developers as a data scientist. Most of my day-to-day work involved training and embedding ML models in Python-based backend applications through microservices, mainly built with the Django framework and using Postgres SQL for sourcing the data.

How I Vibecoded a Backend (and Frontend) on InterSystems IRIS

I wanted to try vibecoding a real backend + frontend setup on InterSystems IRIS, ideally using something realistic rather than a toy example. The goal was simple: take an existing, well-known persistent package in IRIS and quickly build a usable UI and API around it — letting AI handle as much of the boilerplate as possible. Here is the result of the experiments.

Hey Community!

We're happy to share a new video from our InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯  Multi-threading an HL7 Interface and scaling beyond FIFO constraints @ Ready 2025

Here at InterSystems, we often deal with massive datasets of structured data. It’s not uncommon to see customers with tables spanning >100 fields and >1 billion rows, each table totaling hundred of GB of data. Now imagine joining two or three of these tables together, with a schema that wasn’t optimized for this specific use case. Just for fun, let’s say you have 10 years worth of EMR data from 20 different hospitals across your state, and you’ve been tasked with finding….

Hi folks!

Is there any way to know the text of the SQL queries executed against the IRIS server?

My case: I have an SQL class query with a few parameters and and some combination of values causes unexpected results.

It'd be great if I could just copy the query from some log of queries done vs my IRIS the server. Cannot find it easily, though. Any advice?

SETassigns value to the variable at RUNTIME.

#DIM declare the variable and it's Data Type at COMPILE TIME.

As%String

or #DIM? Your design, your rules.

New to using Analytics and using Dashboards. We have this Report, SQL Query that lists out the Activity per Data Source in Health Share Provider Directory. Instead of running it as a report, because it takes a while to run, was wondering if there is a way to do this as a Dashboard instead.

How can I take the SQL from this report and create a Dashboard instead?

Hello,

We are accessing an InterSystems Cacha database from Microsoft SQL Server using a linked server over ODBC (ODBC35). Queries are executed using OPENQUERY.

On the SQL Server side, there is a linked server property called Query Timeout. By default it is set to 0 (no timeout). We are considering setting it to 15 seconds and would like to understand how Cache behaves in this scenario.

I have a Photo that is stored as an VARBINARY within MS SQL. I would like to Select the data into a EnsLib.SQL.Snapshot, is that possible? I would take it out of the Snapshot and send it to a %Stream so it can be written out to a file.

Defining my first REST API within InterSystems using iris-rest-Api-template as a basis and I am seeing if someone could provide me some guidance to see if I can make it work.  

In some of my other posts, I have been trying to come up with a way for our Enterprise Application Development team which works with .Net to build Applications to make a REST call to our instance of InterSystems to query some of the Cache Tables we have defined. 

Using the iris-rest-api-template, I have created the osuwmc.DataLookup.REST.Base.cls

ClassExtends%CSP.REST"application/json"

There is a Master Table within IRIS that I am populating from Epic but want to share it with our Enterprise Application Development Team (Web). As a test I was able to use _SYSTEM from postman to execute the following.

POST /api/atelier/v1/xxxx/action/query HTTP/1.1
Host: xxxxxxxx
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: ••••••
Cookie: CSPSESSIONID-SP-443-UP-api-atelier-=00f0000000000AKyLjBfUvU$MpFD8UT8y$EoNKNw1ixZeXN4_Q; CSPWSERVERID=hzZAT5rb
Content-Length: 86

{"query": "SELECT * FROM osuwmc_Epic_Clarity.DepartmentMaster WHERE ID = '300000000'"}

Hi developers!

There is a neat feature of ObjectScript classes - Query element, which allows you to write in a clear SQL (without any & or ()), pass parameters to it and call it from ObjectScript as do QueryNameFunc() or via Call SQLProcedureName via SQL, .e.g.

Query MyQuery(p as%String

All works fine, but when I tried to use the same for a DELETE statement see the following error:

SELECT expected, DELETE found ^ DECLARE Q1 CURSOR FOR DELETE

Is the Query element for SELECT only? What am I doing wrong? )

The Rut

Up until early this year, I haven't been not doing much coding at all -- I had gotten sick of it.

After many years as a hands-on software engineer and data scientist, I got burned out around 2015. I switched to business development roles focused on "external innovation," then joined InterSystems in 2019 as a product manager. I missed the creative aspects of coding, but not the tedium. The endless cycle of boilerplate, debugging, and context-switching had left me creatively depleted.

Hey Developers,

Enjoy the new video on InterSystems Developers YouTube

⏯  Inside Vector Search - Technical Innovations In InterSystems IRIS @ READY 2025

Looking at my database I see I have a very big ^rINDEXSQL global? Why is that? 😬

In the Management Portal SQL page, under "SQL Statements" I see a 'Clean stale' button - what does this do? 🤔

In the list of Statements some have a 'Location' value and some don't? How is that? 🤨

Hey Community!

We're happy to share a new video from our InterSystems Developers YouTube:

⏯  Using InterSystems Data Studio with Supply Chain Module as a Data Gateway @ Ready 2025

Hi,

We’re launching an Early Access Program for an upcoming Table Partitioning feature that will help IRIS customers manage very large tables, and distribute row data and associated indices across databases and storage tiers. Table Partitioning cuts deep into the core of IRIS relational data management, so we want to make sure we get things right through working with a few engaged customers who can provide feedback on the initial deliverables, and fine-tune as needed.

I want to extract data from IRIS (Health Share Provider Directory) and write the data out to a file that I can use within an external system. Using EnsLib.SQL.Service.GenericService do I need to supply Credentials if I am querying IRIS locally? I have always used JDBC to connect externally when creating Services and Operations to read/write SQL data from external Databases, but never internally. Normally I would just use sql or code to pull the data within a Process or DTC. But in this case, I want the Service to drive the workflow, and query the data from Local Tables

Apache Airflow is the leading open-source platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor data pipelines and workflows using Python. Workflows are defined as code (DAGs), making them version-controlled, testable, and reusable. With a rich UI, 100+ built-in operators, dynamic task generation, and native support for cloud providers, Airflow powers ETL/ELT, ML pipelines, and batch jobs at companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Spotify.

Airflow Application Layout