Article Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Feb 15, 2021 17m read

A concurrent session in IRIS:
SQL, Objects, REST, and GraphQL
 

Kazimir Malevich, "Athletes" (1932)
 

"But of course you don't understand! How can a person who has always traveled in a horse-drawn carriage understand the feelings and impressions of the express traveler or the pilot in the air?"

Kazimir Malevich (1916)

Introduction

We’ve already addressed the topic of why object/type representation is superior to SQL for implementing subject area models. And those conclusions and facts are as true now as they have ever been. So why should we take a step back and discuss technologies that drag abstractions back to the global level, where they had been in the pre-object and pre-type era? Why should we encourage the use of spaghetti code, which results in bugs that are hard to track down, and which relies only on virtuoso developer skills? 

There are several arguments in favor of transmitting data via SQL/REST/GraphQL-based APIs as opposed to representing them as types/objects:

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Article Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Oct 7, 2019 12m read

How can you allow computers to trust one another in your absence while maintaining security and privacy?

“A Dry Martini”, he said. “One. In a deep champagne goblet.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
“Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?”
"Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.
Casino Royale, Ian Fleming, 1953


OAuth helps to separate services with user credentials from “working” databases, both physically and geographically. It thereby strengthens the protection of identification data and, if necessary, helps you comply with the requirements of countries' data protection laws.

With OAuth, you can provide the user with the ability to work safely from multiple devices at once, while "exposing" personal data to various services and applications as little as possible. You can also avoid taking on "excess" data about users of your services (i.e. you can process data in a depersonalized form).

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Question Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Sep 1, 2019

OAuth server to be deployed on the IRIS learning cloud platform. Clients - one on the other instance of the learning IRIS server, the other client locally on my computer in the container docker.

Both clients get a seemingly correct link (through ##class(%SYS.OAuth2.Authorization).GetAuthorizationCodeEndpoint()) to the login request form:  

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Article Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Mar 31, 2019 20m read

How Tax Service, OpenStreetMap, and InterSystems IRIS
could help developers get clean addresses

 

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Paying the Tax (The Tax Collector), 1640

In my previous article, we just skimmed the surface of objects. Let's continue our reconnaissance. Today's topic is a tough one. It's not quite BIG DATA, but it's still the data not easy to work with: we're talking about fairly large amounts of data. It won't all fit into RAM at once, and some of it won't even fit on the drive (not due to lack of space, but because there's a lot of junk). The name of our subject is FIAS DB: the Federal Information Address System database - the databases of addresses in Russia. The archive is 5.5 GB. And it's a compressed XML file. After extraction, it will be a full 53 GB (set aside 110 GB for extraction). And when you start to parse and convert it, that 110 GB won't be enough. There won't be enough RAM either.

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Article Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Jan 21, 2019 10m read

Headache-free stored objects: a simple example of working with InterSystems Caché objects in ObjectScript and Python

Neuschwanstein Castle

Tabular data storages based on what is formally known as the relational data model will be celebrating their 50th anniversary in June 2020. Here is an official document – that very famous article.  Many thanks for it to Doctor Edgar Frank Codd. By the way, the relational data model is on the list of the most important global innovations of the past 100 years published by Forbes.

On the other hand, oddly enough, Codd viewed relational databases and SQL as a distorted implementation of his theory.  For general guidance, he created 12 rules that any relational database management system must comply with (there are actually 13 rules). Honestly speaking, there is zero DBMS's on the market that observes at least Rule 0. Therefore, no one can call their DBMS 100% relational :) If you know any exceptions, please let me know.

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Question Dmitrii Kuznetsov · Jan 9, 2019

Found a strange documentation block about Python bindings in Chapter 3.6 of the Caché manipulation functions with time and date. It looks like this text accidentally copied one to one of the Perl binging documentation. It's funny that the packages of functions called PTIME_STRUCTPtr, PDATE_STRUCTPtr and PTIMESTAMP_STRUCTPtr is suspicious for Python :)  

On the other hand, nothing is said about the functions parse_time, parse_date, parse_timestamp, which are present in /dev/python/intersys/pythonbind.py ahhh!

Has anyone encountered this problem?

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