#InterSystems IRIS

Overview I'm excited to announce the release of testcontainers-iris-node, a Node.js library that makes it easy to spin up temporary InterSystems IRIS containers for integration and E2E testing. This project is a natural addition to the existing family of Testcontainers adapters for IRIS, including testcontainers-iris-python and testcontainers-iris-java.

Why Randomization is Key When Splitting Data for Machine Learning

Post:
Essentially, Machine Learning is about learning from data. Having "good" data leads to better models, and more importantly, the quality of the information being used plays a crucial role in improving prediction accuracy.

One critical step in the process is how we separate our data into training and validation sets. If this isn’t done properly, we risk introducing bias, overfitting, or unrealistic performance expectations for the model.

In this article, we’ll explore:

Well... It's time for testing. We know that often, it's already over. So, what now? Can I improve the quality of my development?

The answer is: YES. Yes, you can. The Toolqa tool aims to do just that. It's a facilitator. What's its goal?

To ensure that APIs meet pre-established business requirements, while also protecting against <sarcasm>  future failed attempts </sarcasm>  to destroy your application, website, app, or anything else that uses your API.

Now you might be wondering, how does this happen? Where's the magic?

Hi everybody,

A customer would like to connect an IRIS database to Metabase BI.  But Metabase does not have a connector that supports the IRIS database.

Metabase only supports these databases:

- Amazon Athena
- BigQuery (Google Cloud Platform)
- Druid
- MongoDB (recommend version 4.2 or higher)
- MySQL (recommend version 8.0.33 or higher, as well as MariaDB version 10.4 or higher)
- Oracle
- PostgreSQL
- Presto
- Redshift (Amazon Web Services)
- Snowflake
- SparkSQL
- SQL Server
- SQLite
- Vertica

And a few others. 

Sometimes your client may request documentation of your BI or interoperability project in a formal document. In this case, MS Word is a good alternative, as it has an advanced editor that allows you to generate professional documentation. Now it's possible!
The iris4word app has this functionality!

Final MS Word Document	Word Template

iris4word business logic

Hello everyone,

I would like to ask whether it is possible to run InterSystems API manager (IAM) on OpenShift. Is there some documentation describing how to do it? I was searching the forum as well as the internet and I have not found much unfortunately.

Any hints would be highly appreciated.

Best regards

Martin Zukal

In this section, we will explore how to use Python as the primary language in IRIS, allowing you to write your application logic in Python while still leveraging the power of IRIS.

• Introduction Python First Approach in IRIS
  • How to use it (irispython)
    • What is irispython?
    • Example of using irispython
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • Using WSGI
    • How to use it
    • Example of using WSGI
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • DB-API
    • How to use it
    • Example of using DB-API
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Alternatives
    • Conclusion
  • Notebook
    • How to use it
    • Example of using Notebook
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
• Bonus Section
  • Using a native interpreter (no irispython)
    • How to use it
    • Pros
    • Cons
  • DB-API Community Edition
    • How to use it
    • Example of using DB-API
    • Pros
    • Cons
  • Debugging Python Code in IRIS
    • How to use it
    • Pros
    • Cons
    • Conclusion
  • IoP (Interoperability on Python)
• Conclusion

Word documents are widely used in the market. Users frequently create contracts, memos, resumes, reports, analyses, and other documents that may require data from or captured by InterSystems IRIS. However, IRIS does not have an API, SDK, library, or adapter for this. This limitation no longer exists. 

Let's start with a simple motivating question: over the past 14 days, what are my most common errors in the Application Error Log?

Answering this through the management portal or terminal is an annoying manual process - we should just be able to use SQL. Fortunately, there are a few class queries to help with this in the SYS.ApplicationError class in the %SYS namespace. You can answer the question for a single date with something like:

select"Error message",count(*)
from SYS.ApplicationError_ErrorList('CCR','12/16/2024')
groupby"Error message"orderby2desc

If you are investigating complex structured Globals this can become
a rather boring typing exercise. Different from Global Explorer in
System Management Portal Global-Inspector allows a kind of drill-down
to dig deeper and deeper by subscript levels.
You also have the option to see the stored content or to show only
the subscript structures.
Globals storing SQL Tables are probably not so thrilling, but in SYSTEM
space you find real trees with completely different branches and twigs.

Global-Inspector can run in browser or from terminal command line.

required input

Imagine you’re walking down the street on a nice summer’s day, and someone walks up to you and says “Hey, you work at InterSystems, right? I’ve been hearing more and more about InterSystems IRIS lately. I know IRIS has its own programing language called ObjectBook? or InstaScript? OK, I admit it, I know it’s called ObjectScript! I know IRIS also supports Python. I’m a Python developer, so that sounds great to me. But I’m also interested in ObjectScript. For example, Python and other languages support collections. Does ObjectScript support collections?”

You’d answer “Of course!”

The new version of InterSystems Testing Manager which I released last week brings @Timothy Leavitt's cool 
Test Coverage Tool to VS Code, and is my entry for the 2025 Developer Tools contest.

Here's a teaser screenshot showing how the unit tests of the IPM project don't yet cover a feature that apparently allows an IPM repository to override its sort order.

Now that we have a good understanding of Python and its features, let's explore how we can leverage Python within IRIS.

• Introduction to Python in IRIS
• Language Tag
  • How to use it?
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion
• Importing Python Modules (pypi modules)
  • How to use it
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion
• Importing Python Modules (custom modules)
  • How to use it
  • Pros
  • Cons
  • Conclusion

Sending emails is a common requirement in integration scenarios — whether for client reminders, automatic reports, or transaction confirmations. Static messages quickly become hard to maintain and personalize. This is where the templated_email module comes in, combining InterSystems IRIS Interoperability with the power of Jinja2 templates.

Why Jinja2 for Emails

Jinja2 is a popular templating engine from the Python ecosystem that enables fully dynamic content generation. It supports:

Hi all,

Just wondering if anyone has any experience with licensing in an HA mirroring environment. We have mirror setup with 2 DB servers (Primary and Backup), and a separate Arbiter using ISCAgent. We currently don't have a license server setup so users using our web app get interruptions and have to log in again if failover occurs. 

We’re building out a data lake in IRIS 2025.1 that aggregates data across multiple business systems and departments. I’m trying to establish best practices for schema design and separation.

Right now, I’m thinking of using a separate schema for each distinct system of record feeding into the data lake - for example, one schema per upstream source system, rather than splitting based on function (e.g. staging, raw, curated). The idea is that this would make it easier to manage source ownership, auditing, and pipeline logic, especially when multiple domains are contributing data.

#InterSystems Demo Games entry

⏯️  IRIS As Healthcare Data Infrastructure

I am trying to set up a web application with Delegated Authentication via IPM. It is possible to give a specific application Delegated Authentication:

<WebApplicationName="/${namespaceLower}/api"NameSpace="${namespace}"DispatchClass="pkg.isc.genai.rest.Handler"MatchRoles=":%All"AutheEnabled="#{$$$AutheDelegated}"Recurse="1"CookiePath="/${namespaceLower}/"
        />

This will be a short article about Python dunder methods, also known as magic methods.

What are Dunder Methods?

Dunder methods are special methods in Python that start and end with double underscores (__). They allow you to define the behavior of your objects for built-in operations, such as addition, subtraction, string representation, and more.

Some common dunder methods include:

Hi Guys,

I'm running : IRIS for UNIX (Ubuntu Server LTS for x86-64 Containers) 2024.3 (Build 217U), and I have https web request call to connect and get data from external server ( https://myserver.com/api/gap/...etc) but I'm getting this error: "fetch failed unable to verify the first certificate".

Hi all,

I’m working on a data transformation in IRIS where I need to calculate the difference in hours between two timestamps stored as %TimeStamp.

Example:

Set startTime = "2024-07-12 08:30:00"
Set endTime = "2024-07-12 15:15:00"

I’d like to calculate the number of hours (with decimals, like 6.75) between them. What's the recommended way to do this in ObjectScript? I’ve seen examples using $ZDATETIME, but I’m not sure if that’s the cleanest approach.

Any suggestions or best practices would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Jhonn Marie

We encountered difficulties while attempting to establish a JDBC connection to Intersystems using AZURE Databricks, resulting in an inability to retrieve data. The JDBC version utilized was intersystems-jdbc-3.3.1.jar. If anyone has successfully employed Databricks for establishing a connection, we would appreciate information regarding the libraries you used

Hi Developers,

We are happy to announce the new InterSystems online programming contest dedicated to creating useful tools to make your fellow developers' lives easier:

🏆 InterSystems Developer Tools Contest 🏆

Duration: July 14 - August 3, 2025

Prize pool: $12,000

Audience

Those curious in exploring new GenerativeAI usecases.

Shares thoughts and rationale when training generative AI for pattern matching.

Challenge 1 - Simple but no simpler

A developer aspires to conceive an elegant solution to requirements.
Pattern matches ( like regular expressions ) can be solved for in many ways. Which one is the better code solution?
Can an AI postulate an elegant pattern match solution for a range of simple-to-complex data samples?

Consider the three string values:

• "AA"
• "BB"
• "CC"

Hey Developers,

Watch this video from our Tech Video Challenge to learn how to set up and work with the InterSystems IRIS Java External Language Gateway.

⏯ IRIS External Language Gateway, Java Edition

If you work with Productions, highlighting connections between Business Hosts is a very convenient feature, allowing developers to get a visual representation of a data flow.

InterSystems FAQ rubric

You can check the free disk space at any time using the system utility class: SYS.Database and query: FreeSpace.

Here's how to try it in the IRIS terminal (go to the %SYS namespace and then run it):

zn"%SYS"set stmt=##class(%SQL.Statement).%New()
set st=stmt.%PrepareClassQuery("SYS.Database","FreeSpace")
set rset=stmt.%Execute()
do rset.%Display()

The output result example is as follows:

*In the command execution example, all databases are located on the same disk, so the free disk space (DiskFreeSpace) returns the same value.

We are looking for experienced InterSystems IRIS for Health developers to join a long-term healthcare technology project. You must be USA-based and available to work full-time remotely.

🔹 Requirements:

• Strong experience with InterSystems IRIS for Health
• Solid understanding of HL7, FHIR, and healthcare integration workflows
• Proficiency in ObjectScript, and Python/Java/SQL
• Prior experience with EHR, LIS, or other clinical systems is a big plus
• Must be based in the United States

Interested candidates can DM here or email on: ali.ceo@softhawker.com
 

Hello Community
I was running code in the terminal and attempted to interrupt its execution. During that process, I encountered an application error with a log entry dated 01/06/1841, the date seems unusual.

Error <INTERRUPT>ErrST+6^%ETN occurred within %ETN itself. Detailed information cannot be logged.