Guru: Getting Started With Python On IBM i

Guru: Getting Started With Python On IBM i

June 10, 2019 Stephanie Rabbani

Python is one of my favorite open-source languages. I’ve used it to build web applications, utilities, and diverse tools such as a web server monitor and an automated application testing suite. In this article, I’ll show you how to install Python on IBM i and create your first program.

Why Python? For several reasons.
- You can use Python to do some cool processing on your system. Graphical application development, games, data analysis, and web development are all Python’s strengths.
- Coding in Python is easy, relatively speaking. The syntax is easy to learn, dropping the formal verbosity found in traditional coding languages.
- It’s a deeper well for new talent. This means it’s more welcoming to beginners, as indicated by Python’s consistent rank as one of the fastest growing languages.
- Python unlocks new ways to optimize and streamline workflow and operations, evolving IBM i so it keeps its throne over the next few decades. Open source is the foundation of the cloud computing world; it’s why IBM has embraced open source technologies in its Power roadmap. Modern languages will influence and evolve how your company interacts with its data.
The Basics Of Python

Python uses very simple syntax:
- It uses spacing instead of brackets to denote code blocks, such as if statements and loops.
- It’s case-sensitive.
There’s no need to explicitly declare variables. Variables are declared when you assign a value. Values are assigned to variables using a single equal sign (=).
```
habs = 24
```
Python is case-sensitive, so Habs is not the same as habs. Comments are preceded with a hash mark (#) and can follow on the same line of code.
```
habs = 24	#number of Stanley cups won by Montreal
```
Or . . .
```
habs = 24
#number of Stanley cups won by Montreal
if habs < 25:
print("they’ve been golfing since 1994")
if habs > 24:
print("I'll be old or dead before this is true, so you'll likely never see this message")
```
Your first Python program can include a built-in Python server.
```
run(host='0.0.0.0', port=8228, debug=True, reloader=True)
```
Setting Up Python On IBM i

Getting started with Python on IBM i is dead simple. Just follow two simple steps.

Step 1: Download and install YUM, an open source package manager.

IBM delivers open source software via YUM, so it’s where you’ll find Python 3 and other open source goodies.

Download YUM here: https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=nas8N1022619. Your system must be at IBM i 7.2 or later.

Important Note: The most secure, stable way is to run YUM and Python is in SSH. IBM i’s Business Architect of open source technologies, Jesse Gorzinski, explains the fundamentals of shells in this blog post, including how to choose and set your shell.

It’s also possible to install via QP2TERM().

Step 2: Install the Python package with YUM
- From Access Client Solutions, IBM’s free GUI for managing your IBM i:
  - Go to the IBM i Tools menu Open Source Package Management.
    - At this point, a list of currently installed Open Source packages will be displayed. If Python3 isn’t there, click the “Available Packages” tab.
    - If you skipped the first step, clicking Open Source Package Management in the Tools menu will present a message asking if you’d like to install YUM.
- From the Command line it’s as simple as typing:
```
yum install python3
```
Now you can download python packages by pip3 install.

Python programs are typically .py extensions.

Optional Step

If you want to avoid having to specify the full path to Python every time you run it, add /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin to your path.

You can use this shell command to change the path:
```
PATH=/QOpenSys/pkgs/bin:$PATH
export PATH
```
Your First Python program
1. From the 5250 command line, run the Edit File (EDTF) command to open the IFS editor.
```
EDTF STMF('/home/steph/hello.py')
```
From the blank EDTF screen, press F15=Services to go to EDTF Options, where you should change the CCSID of hello.py to 1208 (Unicode), a Python-friendly encoding, as shown below:
1. On the first line, type the following:
```
print("hello world")
```
Press F3 to save and exit.
1. CALL QP2TERM or ssh to access PASE, and key the following command to run the Python program.
```
python3 /home/steph/hello.py
```
An IBM Champion and senior consultant for Seiden Group, Stephanie has developed web applications on the IBM i for over 15 years. Her expertise encompasses PHP, Python, DB2, SQL, RPG, Git, WebSmart, IBM i integration techniques and more. She develops a broad range of applications—shopping carts, ordering, warehousing, dashboards, mobile/responsive applications, Salesforce integration, and more—for small to Fortune 500 companies.
RELATED STORIES

Club-Seiden Python for IBM i Examples

IBM i Open Source

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In the technology business for 30+ years including more than a decade in cloud backup and disaster recovery, we’ve learned a few things along the way. Here are best practices to follow – and land mines to avoid.
1. RELIABILITY. Up to 71% of restores from tape contain failures.
- BEST PRACTICE: Use disk-to-disk technology for backups.
With disk-to-disk technology, your backup data resides on disk drives, proven to be far more reliable than tapes. When your backup completes, you know the data is secure and accessible on the disk drive. With tapes you never really know if your data is usable until you try to restore it, at which point it’s too late.
1. BREADTH OF OFFERING. Choice in product and service offerings meet your business’ needs.
- BEST PRACTICE: Don’t settle for less than what you need.
Vendor offerings vary widely. Some are designed primarily for consumers and others for enterprise data centers. Choose a solution that scales and offers the features you need to provide the level of service you expect. De-duplication and delta-block technologies will improve performance, reduce your data footprint and save you money. Find out if their de-duplication offering is at the file level or the block level. Make sure the solution can back up servers, PCs, and laptops as well your applications.
1. SECURITY. 60% of organizations using tapes don’t encrypt their backups.
- BEST PRACTICE: End-to-end encryption with no “back door.”
Using encryption with tape makes backups run slowly and often takes too long to fit within a backup window. As a result, most people simply turn encryption off, creating a security risk. Even with the physical safety of disk-to-disk backup, encryption is essential. Look for 256-bit AES. Find a solution that encrypts your data during transmission and storage. Make certain there isn’t a “back door” that would let someone else view your data.
1. ACCESSIBILITY. Companies waste thousands of hours waiting on tapes.
- BEST PRACTICE: Ensure that you can get your data back with minimal delay.
You should have direct access to your backups, with no time spent on physical transport (no trucks, no warehouses). Restores should take minutes, not hours or days. Set yourself up to work with your data, not wait for it. Make sure your solution provider can meet your Return-to-Operations (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) which determine how quickly you can recover your data and maintain business continuity. Inquire about onsite and offsite replication that provide both improved performance and a solid disaster recovery strategy.
1. CYBER SECURITY. More than 80 percent of U.S. companies have been successfully hacked, according to a Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook Survey.
- BEST PRACTICE: Regular cyber security training and phishing tests for all employees using company email are essential to your organization.
Your end-users are the weak link in your network security. Today, your employees are frequently exposed to advanced phishing attacks. Trend Micro reported that 91% of successful data breaches started with a spear-phishing attack. Be sure your vendor of choice includes cyber security training as part of their backup and DR package.
1. SCALABILITY. Some backup systems can’t scale readily.
- BEST PRACTICE: Invest in a data protection architecture that can grow with your business.
You should be able to back up your data no matter how large it grows. Starting small? Look for an option that handles your backups automatically. Then, as you grow, gives you tools to manage complex environments. Look for “changes-only” and compression technologies to speed backups and save space. And insist on bandwidth throttling to balance traffic and ensure network availability for your other business applications. Make sure that their solution offerings rely on common technology to scale easily as your business––and data––grow.
1. COST-EFFECTIVENESS
- BEST PRACTICE: Calculate the true total cost of tape-based back up.
A 2019 Server OS Reliability Survey found that one hour of downtime costs at least $100K for 98% of companies to over $5 million for 34% of surveyed companies. When you do the math, the dollars make sense: Go with disk-to-disk. Unlike tape, there are close to zero handling costs—no rush deliveries, loading, accessing, locating, or repeated steps. And there’s one benefit you can’t factor directly: Reputation. Reliability and security can make an incalculable difference with just one avoided breach or failure.
1. COMPLIANCE. Most companies have problems satisfying privacy, security, and data retention regulations.
- BEST PRACTICE: Choose a data protection partner who has deep know-how about compliance, and the technology to ensure it.
1. Disaster Recovery. Most companies lack a comprehensive, tested plan for disasters.
- BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor that delivers a complete DR solution.
You can’t say your data protection is complete until you have a disaster recovery plan that is itself complete and tested. Your backup vendor should have both the product mix and professional services team to help you prepare for a worst-case scenario. Make sure they can help configure your backups so you rebound quickly. Best bet: A vendor who can train you to deal with disasters confidently, based on your company’s actual configuration.
1. EASE OF USE. Some companies don’t —or can’t—manage their backups from one place.
- BEST PRACTICE: Get control and reporting you can use anywhere, with ease. Managing your backup environment should be simple, and the software you use should eliminate any guesswork that could lead to lost data. You should know at all times if your data is protected across your entire network—including remote offices—by simply looking at a dashboard. The software should be simple to configure using wizards, yet powerful enough to meet your specific needs with customizable views, job propagation, and roles-based security.
1. OPERATING SYSTEM AND PLATFORM SUPPORT. Most backup vendors support a limited range of OS, server types, and applications.
- BEST PRACTICE: Look for broad and deep technology that supports your complete environment. Your backup solution should accommodate your environment, not vice versa.
1. CUSTOMER SUPPORT. Backup vendors’ product support varies widely.
- BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor whose support is passionate, maybe even slightly obsessed. Customer support should be one of your vendor’s main selling points. You shouldn’t have to wonder if they’ll be there to help when you need them most. Do they offer phone support or email only, and who exactly are you talking to when you call that 800 number? Find a vendor that will treat your data as if it were their own.
1. REPUTATION. Does your backup vendor have a quality reputation and the financial resources to stay in business for the long haul?
- BEST PRACTICE: Find a vendor with strong financial backing and customer references. There are a lot of vendors that have come and gone. When you consider a service provider, look for one that has strong financial backing, a solid business plan and the ability to be in business as long as your data needs to be stored. Ask for customer references and case studies as their customers are the best validation you can get.
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6 thoughts on “Guru: Getting Started With Python On IBM i”
- Mike Krebs says:
  
  June 10, 2019 at 10:09 am
  
  The steps 2 and 3 in “your first python program” appear to need lowercase (print instead of Print and python3 instead of Python3). And the EDTF command created the file in CCSID 37 which apparently python3 does not understand directly. In EDTF, I used Services (F15) to change the file CCSID to 1208 (UTF-8) and then I was able to run the program.
  
  Reply
  - alanseiden says:
    
    June 19, 2020 at 12:23 pm
    
    Thanks, Mike! The article has been updated as you suggested, including setting CCSID=1208.
    
    Reply
- Mark Soulje says:
  
  June 10, 2019 at 1:41 pm
  
  thank you for the article. used this as my excuse to try the Python waters again. don’t know if it’s helpful to anyone else. had to use python3 instead of Python3 and changed the line of code from Print to print to get it to work.
  
  Reply
  - se yarbrough says:
    
    January 10, 2020 at 9:32 am
    
    Great read..thanks for the article..
    
    Reply
  - alanseiden says:
    
    June 19, 2020 at 12:24 pm
    
    Mark, you’re right. Those “P”s have been made lowercase now.
    
    Reply
- john says:
  
  September 25, 2020 at 6:51 am
  
  What an half baked article is this ?
  
  yum install python3
  
  Now you can download python packages by pip3 install.,.. what does this step says.. where to download python3 packages, and where does it go /
  
  Reply
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