Recent versions of IRIS come with Lite Terminal available from VSCode. It's a websocket server, with JSON messaging. Here's how to connect to it from Python:
Welcome to the monthly recap of updates and releases to VS Code and InterSystems-related extensions relevant to IRIS developers. We'll break down the updates that are relevant to InterSystems developers with tips on how they can be applied to your day-to-day projects.
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.
The official InterSystems VS Code extensions are packed with features that make developing with InterSystems products a breeze. Today I'd like to highlight some small but useful features that you may have missed.
Show All Class Members
You can view all members of the current class, including inherited members, with the click of a button. Just click on the class icon in the top-right corner of the editor window and a filterable list of all members will appear. Clicking on one will reveal it in an editor tab.
We are a group of interface analysts in a healthcare setting, running IRIS for Health 2024, having upgraded over time from an old ENSEMBLE environment. We have been working on a wish list of development goals, but are having trouble finding the correct, best practice method/path for getting to what we envision.
I didn't know about ObjectScript until I started my new job. Objectscript isn't actually a young programming language. Compared to C++, Java and Python, the community isn't as active, but we're keen to make this place more vibrant, aren't we?
I've noticed that some of my colleagues are finding it tricky to get their heads around the class relationships in these huge projects. There aren't any easy-to-use modern class diagram tool for ObjectScript.
What containers are and why they make sense with IRIS 2.1 Containers and images in a nutshell 2.2 Why containers are useful for developers 2.3 Why IRIS works well with Docker
Prerequisites
Installing the InterSystems IRIS image 4.1 Using Docker Hub 4.2 Pulling the image
Running the InterSystems IRIS image 5.1 Starting an IRIS container 5.2 Checking container status 5.3 Executing code in the container terminal 5.4 Accessing the IRIS Management Portal 5.5 Connecting the container to VS Code 5.6 Stopping or removing the container 5.7 Setting a specific password with a bind mount 5.8 Using durable %SYS volumes 5.8.1 What gets stored with durable %SYS 5.8.2 How to enable durable %SYS
Using Docker Compose 6.1 Docker Compose example 6.2 Running Docker Compose
Using a Dockerfile to run custom source code 7.1 Dockerfile example 7.2 Docker Compose example 7.3 Understanding layers, image tagging and build vs. run time 7.4 Source code and init script 7.5 Building the image with Dockerfile 7.6 Running instructions in the containerized IRIS terminal
Have a question/discussion. Sometimes, while developing, we'd need to connect VSCode directly to a remote server (e.g., stage one) for debugging purposes. And after change back to local one. And then to remote again.
How do you perform this switching in VSCode in a convenient way?
I have several settings.json files (settings_local, settings_remote) which I put to a main settings.json when I need to make VSCode to connect to switch the connection:
Let's start by learning about debugging requirements!
Prerequisites
There are two plugins (extensions) for debugging ObjectScript:
The first is part of the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension Pack. The second is Serenji, a standalone plugin that provides an editor, file manager, and debugging functionality. Both plugins can be installed from the plugin store. To activate key functionality, Serenji requires a license. For this article, we'll use the InterSystems ObjectScript Extension Pack to reduce the learning curve. After you've mastered the basics, you can consider purchasing a paid license for Serenji.
In this article, we'll cover a quick start to Git development with the InterSystems Developer Community and version control practices when working with IRIS InterSystems. We'll cover scenarios where we need to export Interoperability classes, globals, and analytics elements such as cubes and dashboards. These scenarios encompass key version control practices with IRIS.
Hello Community! As another great year comes to a close, I wanted to notify you about an upcoming change to the vscode-objectscript extension. In an effort to reduce the extension's footprint, simplify maintenance, and improve ease of use, InterSystems plans to remove some rarely-used configuration settings. Our telemetry tells us that these settings are changed from the default by fewer than 2% of users. However, before finalizing the removal I would like to give any users of these settings the opportunity to explain why a setting shouldn't be removed.
It was encouraging to see more people building VS Code extensions for the recent contest. However I noticed that of of the three extensions requiring credentials with which to make their connections only mine, gj :: dataLoader, leverages the long-established and officially-supported InterSystems Server Manager extension to obtain the connection definitions and to handle credentials securely.
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.
I'm pleased to announce the publication of gj :: dataLoader, a new VS Code extension that simplifies the task of loading data from local CSV files into SQL tables on your InterSystems IRIS servers.
Here's an introductory video:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/XohVoW5rSy4 [This is an embedded link, but you cannot view embedded content directly on the site because you have declined the cookies necessary to access it. To view embedded content, you would need to accept all cookies in your Cookies Settings]
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.
There are a select few in the group that have been using Github as a Local Client push to a Repository setup in GitHub. Questions were brought up today about the security, and possible issues when it comes to data being pushed in this method.
Looking over code we have noticed that there is Histogram data within some of the class files that could be considered a security issue. Does anyone else have concerns with the Histogram data being within the class files pushed up to github?
The Load Data utility it is an excellent tool to load data from CSV/TXT files into an IRIS SQL Table, but it is required send the target file to the IRIS server and write the Load Data sentence to ingest the file content. Now it is possible select a file in VSCode, set the table destination and submit the request. The vscode-load-data utility will send the file to the IRIS server and run the Load Data command to you! Very simple:
gj :: configExplorer is a new VS Code extension integrating with Server Manager and leveraging Structurizr to produce configuration diagrams of your servers.
Here's a short introductory video.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/WHkoZsg6P-A [This is an embedded link, but you cannot view embedded content directly on the site because you have declined the cookies necessary to access it. To view embedded content, you would need to accept all cookies in your Cookies Settings]
I'm pleased to announce version 2.6.0 of the VS Code ObjectScript extension, containing a number of enhancements that make a developer's life easier. Some highlights are described below. As always, find the full list of modifications in the CHANGELOG, including many bug and vulnerability fixes.
I'm using from visual code. My routines are server-side files. If I try to search patterns in files (e.g find all routines containing the string "version=3") , the search runs but didn't find anything. If I do the same search from the management portal, it finds all routines including this pattern with a good performance.
Following 2 local Webinars we had focused on VS Code ["Intro" and "Beyond Basics"; in Hebrew], I prepared for the participants some related links of relevant resources which we sent as a follow-up. Sharing them here as well for the benefit of the Community. You are all of course welcome to add more useful resources.
Over time, while I was working with Interoperability on the IRIS Data Platform, I developed rules for organizing a project code into packages and classes. That is what is called a Naming Convention, usually. In this topic, I want to organize and share these rules. I hope it can be helpful for somebody.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/u7gcc629REM [This is an embedded link, but you cannot view embedded content directly on the site because you have declined the cookies necessary to access it. To view embedded content, you would need to accept all cookies in your Cookies Settings]
In my DB, it has more than 10,000 files. I tried to search for a particular file (mac), but there is no search option to find it. Can you help me find that option to search for a file?
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