Skip to main content

New in HealthShare Health Connect 2023.1

This page describes the new and enhanced features in the 2023.1 release of HealthShare® Health Connect, which is an extended maintenance (EM) release. Some of these features were also available in the continuous delivery (CD) releases since 2022.1, the previous EM release.

For a more exhaustive list of the changes included in this release, refer to the Upgrade ChecklistOpens in a new tab.

Release Information for 2023.1

The current maintenance release is 2023.1.2. The posting for 2023.1.2 is build 2023.1.2.450.0.

Enhancing Analytics and AI

Columnar Storage

Columnar Storage is a new storage option for InterSystems SQL tables. Columnar Storage offers analytical queries which are an order of magnitude faster than traditional row queries on InterSystems IRIS. Such queries typically aggregate data over very large tables and typically involve filters and groupings on one or more columns. By laying out the table data by column rather than by row (which works best for transactions on a handful of rows at a time), we can dramatically reduce the amount of I/O required to run such queries and exploit modern chipset-level optimizations called SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) to further improve performance as part of vectorized query processing.

Note:

This capability first became available in HealthShare Health Connect 2022.2 as an experimental feature. It is now fully supported for production use in 2023.1, with the exception of using columnar storage for sharded tables. Support for this combination will be delivered in a future release. Customers who used the experimental version of this capability should reload all columnar table data after upgrading to 2023.1.

For more details, see Choose an SQL Table Storage Layout.

Enhancing Speed, Scale and Security

Foreign Tables

This release introduces a new capability for leveraging external data in HealthShare Health Connect. To any SQL queries you write in InterSystems IRIS, Foreign Tables present themselves as regular InterSystems tables. However, their data is not physically stored within the Health Connect server. They may be in remote files, third-party databases (on-prem or DBaaS), or a separate Health Connect server to which an ECP connection would not be practical. In other words, the data in these tables is not managed by the Health Connect instance, but it is projected to the Health Connect instance.

Health Connect 2023.1 includes support for projecting data from CSV files and JDBC data sources. The JDBC option leverages existing SQL Gateway infrastructure for managing connection details and credentials, and the syntax and capabilities for using file sources is fully aligned with the existing LOAD DATA command.

Important:

Foreign Tables are available in Health Connect 2023.1 as an Experimental Feature. This means they are not supported for production environments. However, the feature is well-tested and InterSystems believes it can add significant value to customers.

InterSystems is looking for feedback on this new capability based on customers’ use in real-world environments. Please reach out on the Developer Community or contact the Worldwide Response Center (WRC) if you would like to share your experiences or you have questions.

For more details, see Foreign Tables.

Memory Settings

New installations of Health Connect now use smarter defaults for shared memory and lock table size settings. The new defaults apply best practice configurations based on the configured global buffer size (which, in turn, considers available system memory if not set by the user) and work well for most workloads. As before, users may still override these defaults with specific values. Existing settings are not affected.

Platform Scalability

This release includes a number of scalability enhancements that enable large production deployments to meet highly demanding workloads. These enhancements include the asynchronous reading of journal files during de-journaling and changes to the infrastructure of the Enterprise Cache Protocol (ECP) which optimize resource usage and limit contention under very high load.

Platform Updates

This release adds support for the following new server platforms:

  • macOS 13 (Ventura)

FeedbackOpens in a new tab