Hey Community,

We have more exciting news! The new InterSystems online programming contest dedicated to Generative AI, Vector Search and Machine Learning is starting very soon!

🏆 InterSystems Vector Search, GenAI and ML Contest 🏆

Duration: April 22 - May 19, 2024

Prize pool: $14,000

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Hello IRIS Community,

InterSystems Certification is developing a certification exam for InterSystems IRIS SQL specialists, and if you match the exam candidate description given below, we would like you to beta test the exam. The exam will be available for beta testing on June 9 - 12, 2024 at InterSystems Global Summit 2024, but only for Summit registrants (visit this page to learn more about Certification at GS24). Beta testing will open for all other interested beta testers on June 24, 2024. However, interested beta testers should sign up now by emailing certification@intersystems.com (please let us know if you will be beta testing at Global Summit or in our online proctored environment). The beta testing must be completed by August 2, 2024.

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Article
· Sep 25, 2024 1m read
Same old terminal but in web

We have Webterminal around for quite a while, but it was limited, not all features worked there. There was no shell support or the latest feature as embedded Python support. There are some issues with tools that require programmer mode. Basic Authorization, not as handy as simple login page, where you could have options to add own login page, in case if you would wish to change the way how to login to the application, such as using SSO.

With the original iris terminal, wrapped into a web form, using most used in the web world xterm.js, used in tools like VSCode as well, with some magic from Python, which helped with interprocess tty. We can get the the terminal in the web, in the full capacity.

iTerm

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Article
· Jul 8, 2024 2m read
Configuring IRIS autostart on Linux

For practical reasons, it may be desirable that after a Linux server restart, the IRIS instance is automatically started.

Below you will find the steps to follow to automate the startup of IRIS during a reboot of the Linux server, via systemd :

1. Create an iris.service file in /etc/systemd/system/iris.service containing the following information

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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.

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Unlike the movie mentioned in the image (for those who don't know, Matrix, 1999), the choice between Dynamic SQL and Embedded SQL is not a choice between truth and fantasy, but it is still a decision to be made. Below, I will try to make your choice easier.

If your need is interactions between the client and the application (and consequently the database), Dynamic SQL may be more appropriate, as it "adapts" very easily to these query changes. However, this dynamism has a cost: with each new query, it is remodeled, which can have a higher cost to execute. Below is a simple example of a Python code snippet.

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The first developer previews of InterSystems IRIS® data platform, InterSystems IRIS® for Health, and HealthShare® Health Connect 2025.1 have been posted to the WRC developer preview site. Containers can be found on our

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Hi

I get the following error when I am trying to create a linked server connection via MS OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers in MS SQL Server Management Studio. The message I get is:

The OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "IRIS" reported an error. The provider did not give any information about the error.
Cannot initialize the data source object of OLE DB provider "MSDASQL" for linked server "IRIS". (Framework Microsoft SqlClient Data Provider)

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Hello everyone,

Recently, I've been working on a Business Process that processes a large JSON FHIR message containing up to 50k requests in an array within the JSON.

Currently, the code imports the JSON as a dynamic object from the original message stream, obtains an iterator from it, and processes each request one at a time in a loop.

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Article
· Jun 13, 2024 4m read
How to check the size of your data

InterSystems FAQ rubric

Data for InterSystems products (table row data, object instance data) is stored in global variables.
The data size of each global can be obtained by clicking the properties of the global you want to view from the Management Portal > System > Configuration > Local Database > Globals page, and then clicking the Calculate Size button on the Global Attributes page that appears.
To display the data sizes of globals in a namespace, you can call ^%GSIZE utility on the terminal.

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Problem

Do you resonate with this - A capability and impact of a technology being truly discovered when it's packaged in a right way to it's audience. Finest example would be, how the Generative AI took off when ChatGPT was put in the public for easy access and not when Transformers/RAG's capabilities were identified. At least a much higher usage came in, when the audience were empowered to explore the possibilities.

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I found myself in the not-so-comfortable situation of working with a Linux system on which someone had accidentally disabled user access to the Linux shell. HealthConnect was running, servicing hundreds of interfaces. To resolve the access issue, though, we needed to bring the host down for the application of a fix.

Without the shell, the iris command is not available to control the instance, so we were faced with the potential of shutting down the server ungracefully. We wanted to avoid that if possible ...

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For some time I have been planning to do some type of proof of concept with the Workflow functionality, which, like so many other functionalities present in IRIS, tends to go quite unnoticed by our clients (and for which I say mea culpa). That's why I decided a few days ago to develop an example of how to configure and exploit this functionality by connecting it with a user interface developed in Angular.

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Article
· Apr 9, 2024 1m read
ODBC / JDBC data truncation

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.

Long story:

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Article
· May 24, 2024 15m read
VIP in GCP

If you're running IRIS in a mirrored configuration for HA in GCP, the question of providing a Mirror VIP (Virtual IP) becomes relevant. Virtual IP offers a way for downstream systems to interact with IRIS using one IP address. Even when a failover happens, downstream systems can reconnect to the same IP address and continue working.

The main issue, when deploying to GCP, is that an IRIS VIP has a requirement of IRIS being essentially a network admin, per the docs.

To get HA, IRIS mirror members must be deployed to different availability zones in one subnet (which is possible in GCP as subnets always span the entire region). One of the solutions might be load balancers, but they, of course, cost extra, and you need to administrate them.

In this article, I would like to provide a way to configure a Mirror VIP without using Load Balancers suggested in most other GCP reference architectures.

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Integrating frontend React applications with backend services like IRIS database via REST APIs can be a powerful way to build robust web applications. However, one common hurdle developers often encounter is the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) issue, which can prevent the frontend from accessing resources on the backend due to security restrictions enforced by web browsers. In this article, we'll explore how to tackle CORS issues when integrating React web apps with IRIS backend services.

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Monitoring your IRIS deployment is crucial. With the deprecation of System Alert and Monitoring (SAM), a modern, scalable solution is necessary for real-time insights, early issue detection, and operational efficiency. This guide covers setting up Prometheus and Grafana in Kubernetes to monitor InterSystems IRIS effectively.

This guide assumes you already have an IRIS cluster deployed using the InterSystems Kubernetes Operator (IKO), which simplifies deployment, integration and mangement.

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Article
· Dec 16, 2024 2m read
Edit your Globals with VSCode and YAML

The best way to list, edit, save and delete globals is using an IDE. Now, it is possible if you use VSCode. It is also possible to save globals using yaml files. Perform the following steps:

1. Get an InterSystems IRIS instance and install the application iris-global-yaml:

zpm:USER>install iris-global-yaml

2. If you just to want an InterSystems IRIS trial for tests git clone and run on docker:

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Updated 2/27/25

Hi Community,

You can unlock the full potential of InterSystems IRIS—and help your team onboard—with the full range of InterSystems learning resources offered online and in person, for every role in your organization. Developers, system administrators, data analysts, and integrators can quickly get up to speed.

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Hi colleagues!

Yet another time I figured that there is no super-simple way to display error from %Status variable, but I need it relatively often in a terminal.

Yes, I know about $$$ Macro, but they are not superhelpful in a terminal.

My usual behavior is to try to remember by heart or copy from somewhere the formula:

USER>w $System.Status.DisplayError(st)

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Article
· May 14, 2024 11m read
Q&A Chatbot with IRIS and langchain

TL;DR

This article introduces using the langchain framework supported by IRIS for implementing a Q&A chatbot, focusing on Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG). It explores how IRIS Vector Search within langchain-iris facilitates storage, retrieval, and semantic search of data, enabling precise and up-to-date responses to user queries. Through seamless integration and processes like indexing and retrieval/generation, RAG applications powered by IRIS enable the capabilities of GenAI systems for InterSystems developers.

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