• Remain Launches AI Chatbot to Assist with Development on RDi

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Developers who code in Eclipse-based environments such as Rational Developer for i (RDi) now have access to Ai Chat, a free ChatGPT-based chatbot launched last month by Remain Software. According to Remain CTO Wim Jongman, the coding copilot displays the programming chops of a seasoned RPG developer.

  The AI revolution continues to unfold at an unprecedented clip, driven in large part by large language models (LLMs) such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Facebook’s LLaMA, among others. Trained on massive corpuses of data culled from the Internet, these LLMs “learn” what words are likely to go with one another, …

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• IBM Introduces watsonx for Governed Analytics, AI

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  At its annual Think conference last week, IBM took the wraps off watsonx, a new platform for crunching big data and developing AI and machine learning applications in a safe and governed environment.

  You don’t need an industry analyst to tell you that artificial intelligence (AI) is having a moment in the sun this year. Thanks to the public launch of ChatGPT in late last year, regular citizens (as opposed to AI experts and industry analyst) have become aware of the vast potential of large language models (LLMs) that can mimic humans in very convincing ways.

  While LLMs like ChatGPT …

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• Java 17 Now GA for IBM i and WebSphere Gets Company

  May 17, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Java 17 is now available on IBM i, IBM announced last month, bringing the first major Java enhancement since Java 11 to the platform. The Java-based Web application server environment is also evolving on IBM i, as Big Blue adds more options besides WebSphere.

  The long-expected introduction of Java 17 on IBM i is finally here, and was delivered as part of the recent IBM Technology Refresh (TR) cycle, which brought us IBM i 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8. IBM is now supporting the latest 64-bit Java development kit (JDK), dubbed IBM Technology for Java 17, with its 5770JV1 …

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• Four Hundred Monitor, May 17

  May 17, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  A few years back, Reader’s Digest told a story about the Henn-Na hotel in Nagasaki, Japan, which hired 243 robots to cover duties ranging from concierge to bellhop. It wasn’t long before managers “fired” half the robots because they kept malfunctioning. This foray into AI may have gone awry pretty quickly, but the idea wasn’t abandoned. In fact, AI is all we are reading about these days. It’s definitely the focus at IBM, as evidenced again in our Top Stories this week. We are also keeping an eye on news closer to home, so take a peek at the resources …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 20

  May 17, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Sorry it took us a few extra days to get this edition of the IBM i PTF Guide out the door. This week, you have three security vulnerabilities and one end of the road for updates to WebSphere Application Server V8.5. Let’s deal with the WebSphere situation first.

  IBM WebSphere Application Server V8.5 Group PTFs for IBM i operating system will no longer be released. You can read more about it here. Here are the final IBM i Group PTF levels containing the 8.5.5.23 fix pack level:

  • IBM i 7.4: SF99661 level 10
  • IBM i 7.3: SF99581 level 16

  …

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• Inside IBM’s Efforts To Modernize The ISV Army

  May 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  “You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.” IBM executives must feel a bit like the eminently quotable Don Rumsfeld, former Secretary of the Department of Defense, as they marshal their assets in the battle for application supremacy. While some of Big Blue’s partners have honed their IBM i applications into modern weapons, others are fielding old equipment more suitable for a previous war.

  It’s no state secret that Big Blue has a legacy problem on its hands in the IBM i world. When the …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Unlocking the Full Potential Of Your IBM i Applications

  May 15, 2023 Greg Patterson

  IBM i is the backbone of mission critical applications for over 120,000 customers worldwide in every conceivable industry and company size, particularly with companies ranging from $50 million to $1 billion in annual revenues and specializing in manufacturing, distribution, financial services, and healthcare. In other words, IBM i supports a significant share of the global economy.

  Although the IBM i platform is very productive, there are many things we can do to modernize our applications and provide more value to the business. But this is easier said than done. Some of the biggest challenges that that we face relate to …

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• Guru: Find Unused Objects On IBM i Using SQL

  May 15, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  I have a client that uses SQL iQuery for nearly all “Report” type applications since SQL iQuery Version 2. They asked if they could create a report that listed all the unused objects in their user libraries. They also wanted the option to output to Excel-compatible format if desired.

  Since SQL iQuery allows you to output the results of your SELECT statements to any of its supported formats, Excel-compatible is given.

  Note: the code for this article is avaialble on GitHub at this link.

  There were a couple of approaches. I could use our other product, SQL Tools OBJECT_LIST …

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• The Inevitable Power9 Hardware Withdrawals Begin

  May 15, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The high end Power10 machine, the Power E1080, has been out since September 2021 and the rest of the Power10 line was announced in July 2022, so the writing was on the wall for any Power9-based machines the minute that happened.

  The ability for IBM to get, much less sell, Power9 chips even if it wanted to is also somewhat dubious, too. In October 2014, IBM sold off its Microelectronics division to Globalfoundries, itself a spinout of AMD’s foundry business five years earlier mashed up with Chartered Semiconductor and backed by the government of Abu Dhabi. Here’s the complication: …

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• IBM i Pros Available for Hire from Programmers.io

  May 10, 2023 Alex Woodie

  If you’re looking for someone with IBM i and RPG skills to help modernize your applications or just to keep the lights on, you might want to consider Programmers.io. You might never have heard of it, but the Texas-based company has been in the IBM i consulting business for over a decade and has built up a considerable force composed of hundreds of IBM i experts.

  Programmers.io is an IT services and software development firm that employs over 600 engineers in the U.S. and India, about 280 of which are skilled in IBM i or RPG. The company got its …

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