New in InterSystems IRIS 2024.2

Removal of Studio

Windows installations of this 2024.2 release do not include the Studio IDE and upgrading an existing instance to this version removes Studio from the instance’s bin directory. Developers who wish to continue using Studio should download the 2024.1 version of the Studio component independently from the WRC component distribution pageOpens in a new tab.

Full Support for Foreign Tables

In the 2023.1 release, InterSystems introduced foreign tables as an experimental feature and worked closely with early adopters through the Early Access Program to solicit feedback on critical features for the full version. With the 2024.2 release, InterSystems has addressed a majority of the feedback, including better metadata management, improved predicate pushdown, and further alignment with the LOAD DATA command that ingests, rather than projects, external data into SQL tables. As part of the promotion out of the experimental status, this release also finalizes the privilege model for managing foreign tables and servers, and running statements against them.

Another new capability introduced in this release is a new THROUGH command to send a SQL statement directly to a foreign server. This new command can be used in exploration scenarios, ahead of a creating a new foreign table after asserting the returned results match expectations.

Foreign tables are now fully supported for production use and all documented APIs can be considered final. InterSystems will continue to enhance the capability, but preserve compatibility with the interfaces available in this 2024.2 release.

Flexible Python Runtime for Microsoft Windows

Customers running on Windows are now able to select the Python runtime used for Embedded Python. You can choose Python 3.9 or higher, including Anaconda, to meet your organization’s needs. Linux users have been able to select their Python runtime since the 2024.1 release.

Business Intelligence

The 2024.2 release includes some enhancements to business intelligence. In particular:

• Standard KPI plugins have been added to calculate the standard deviation and variance based on measures from fact tables.

• Changes that provide better integration with the PowerBI connector privileges so that the PowerBI user has access to all cubes that are not restricted by a resource or are public cubes.

Reports

The 2024.2 release includes a new version of Logi Report 2024.1 SP2, including enhancements to PDF exports. For additional details, see the Logi Report release notesOpens in a new tab.

SQL Performance

The 2024.2 release includes a number of enhancements that benefit SQL query performance:

• When ingesting large volumes of data into tables using columnar storage, a new JDBC driver optimization will speed up ingestion as much as an order of magnitude.

• Use of the YEAR, ISNULL, NVL, and COALESCE functions in SQL queries now trigger additional optimizations that should lead to more efficient query execution strategies.

• Query processing now makes broader use of global temporary tables (shared by multiple worker processes) and adaptive parallel execution (such as when using the %FIND operator), enhancing overall performance.

JobServers

The behavior of the JobServers parameter has been updated. Previously, new jobs servers were not created to replace ones that were utilized, and the parameter set both the total number and the number created upon start up.

With the update, the JobServers parameter still sets the number of job servers created at start up, but it also determines the target number of available job servers the system will maintain. As job servers are utilized, more are created so there are always available job servers.

Ubuntu Version Support

The 2024.2 release adds platform support for Ubuntu 24.04.

Ubuntu 20.04, which was supported in earlier versions, is no longer a supported platform.