Optimizing Performance of Apache Web Server and Web Gateway

By Patrick Jamieson, M.D., Product Technical Manager, InterSystems IRIS for Health

When working with InterSystems IRIS or IRIS for Health, an external web server like Apache2 or NGINX is essential for managing HTTP workloads, especially for FHIR servers Starting with version 2023.3, the private Apache server was removed from the installation kit (except for Community Editions and Health Connect).

I know that people who are completely new to VS Code, Git, Docker, FHIR, and other tools can sometimes struggle with setting up the environment. So I decided to write an article that walks through the entire setup process step by step to make it easier to get started.

I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a comment at the end - let me know if the instructions were clear, if anything was missing, or if there’s anything else you'd find helpful.

The setup includes:

✅ VS Code – Code editor
✅ Git – Version control system
✅ Docker – Runs an instance of IRIS for Health Community
✅ VS Code REST Client Extension – For running FHIR API queries
✅ Python – For writing FHIR-based scripts
✅ Jupyter Notebooks – For AI and FHIR assignments

Before you begin: Ensure you have administrator privileges on your system.

In addition to reading the guide, you can also follow the steps in the videos:

For Windows

Hi developers,

We have received quite a lot of interest in using SQL on FHIR data. As you know, FHIR data is encoded in the form of a complex directed graph, and thus you can not easily query it with traditional SQL queries or business intelligence tools. Some customers have noticed that the "FHIR search tables" in IRIS for Health have flattened part of the FHIR graph, and have tried to use them for analytics. This is an undocumented and unsupported part of IRIS for Health, and can change without notice.

Launching IRIS Using Docker

This brief document will walk through the steps to launch IRIS community edition using Docker on the MAC. For those new to Docker, the first two pages explain how to install Docker, and run some basic commands that will be needed to get the IRIS community edition running. Experienced Docker users can skip directly to page three.

1. Get Docker Desktop for MAC. This can be downloaded at Docker Hub, but one should look at the requirements before downloading it to ensure it works smoothly. The directions and download link are at: https://docs.docker.