• Guru: Two More Small But Handy RPG Enhancements: LIKE(*EXT) And %LOOKUPNE

  September 28, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  Not every trip into the field calls for hauling the whole pack, and not every search calls for scanning everything by hand. Two of the smaller enhancements in this batch of July PTFs for IBM i 7.5 and 7.6 are exactly that kind of quiet convenience: tools that let you reach for just the piece you actually need instead of doing more work than the job requires.

  DISCLAIMER: The mushroom names and file/field names used in the examples below are purely to give the sample programs some context and make them more interesting. Before foraging for or consuming any wild …

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• IBM i Integration Gives Costco Shoppers Real-Time Inventory

  September 28, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Here’s the scene: Janet is perusing the computer aisles at Costco when suddenly she sees it: The exact configuration of a MacBook Pro she’s been looking for, at a really good price. As she’s getting ready to buy it, Janet makes a grim discovery: Costco is out of that particular MacBook Pro, and the item on display is the last one in the store.

  Janet isn’t the first customer to be disappointed in this way. Retailers have long struggled to adequately reflect the actual warehouse product inventory with the items on display in the front of the store. Communicating out-of-stock …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 33

  September 28, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  Welcome to the 33^rd edition of 2026 of the IBM i PTF Guide. The good news is that there are lot fewer security vulnerabilities for the IBM i platform that we reported on last week. There are, once again, updates to IBM i 7.3 through IBM i 7.6 for various PTF groups.

  We will start with the security issues and patches, and count them off to keep track of them.

  1. Security Bulletin: Multiple Vulnerabilities in IBM Java SDK affect IBM WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Application Server Liberty due to August 2026 CPU, which is available to …

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• IBM “Price Harmonization” Increases For Power Systems Coming In The New Year

  September 21, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When we look back a few years from now, in like maybe 2032 or so, we will look at 2026 as the year of the price increase. Big Blue, along with other system makers and the component makers whose gear goes into those systems, have all had price increases – often very large ones, and sometimes with what looks to me like opportunistic pricing. That’s when vendors raise prices by more than you would think was warranted.

  Sometime in early September – I think it might have been on September 1, 2, or 3 – IBM announced a price harmonization …

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• Code For i Continues To Grow. Here Is What’s New

  September 21, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Code for i has been the hottest open source project in the IBM i community for several years, and that popularity is not dropping. In fact, the community behind the red hot project continues to improve the VS Code-based development environment, including new functionality that we can expect to see released in the future.

  Code for i is a VS Code plug-in originally created by Liam Allan in 2021 to make Web-based development possible for ILE developers on IBM i. The project has exploded in popularity over the past five years, with nearly 93,000 installs recorded on the Microsoft Marketplace …

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• PowerSC: Your One-Stop Shop For Security On IBM i – And Beyond

  September 21, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Keeping on top of changing security threats is difficult, to say the least. It is even harder to map changing threats to changing configurations on your IBM i server. When your IT network also includes AIX and Linux systems, the difficulty gets multiplied. For these types of environments, IBM provides a tool called PowerSC.

  When IBM launched PowerSC (which stands for security and compliance) as an IBM Lab Services product way back in 2010, it was primarily designed for setting up security configurations and running audits on AIX. That is not the case today, as the tool provides a plethora …

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• As I See It: You’ve Been Flocked

  September 21, 2026 Victor Rozek

  Perhaps you have had a similar experience. You’re hiking in a park or in a wilderness area and since it’s ungodly hot, you’ve taken care to eat well and hydrate. Now you’re miles from the trailhead and the nearest bathroom and you have to poop. Into the bushes you go. Ordinarily, not an event worthy of mention or concern. But these days, on at least one occasion, I’ve had a disquieting thought: I wonder if there’s a trail cam filming me?

  Privacy, if not dead, is on life support. It’s a safe bet that wherever you are and whatever you’re …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 32

  September 21, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  Another week, and another bunch of security vulnerabilities for the IBM i platform. Plus a slew of stuff to update IBM i 7.3 through IBM i 7.6. Let us start with the security issues and patches, as we always do, and count them off to 11 so we can keep track of them.

  1. Security Bulletin: IBM Db2 Mirror for i is vulnerable to Authentication Bypass by Spoofing [CVE-2026-18065], which you can read HERE. Affected Products and Versions:

  IBM i Release	5770-DBM 	PTF Numbers
  7.6				SJ11475
  7.5				SJ11474 
  7.4				SJ11471 
  

  2. Security Bulletin: IBM i Is Affected By Multiple …

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• Finally: Some Pricing Information On The Power S1112 Entry Server

  September 14, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  UPDATED: The entry “Bonnell+” Power S1112 server based on the Power11 processor – the only machine that has a P05 software tier for the IBM i operating system – has been shipping for six weeks now, and I have been digging around trying to get detailed, feature-level pricing for the new machine. I have yet to find that fine-grained pricing that I love to have my hands on, but I did get some help from some friends in the reseller community to get current prices for six different configurations of the Power S1112 – two tower configurations and four rack …

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• Rocket Automates Manual IBM i Tasks With AI

  September 14, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has a multi-pronged AI strategy that spans multiple products and platforms. When it comes to the IBM i platform, this AI push has resulted in Rocket adding AI features that will automate previously manual tasks across its application modernization, change management, and high availability products.

  AI continues to be the elephant in the IT room, but unlike those quiet elephants in that expression, which no one admits is there, this is the elephant that nobody can stop talking about and for good reason: The 2026 edition of AI appears to be the real deal.

  Take a KPMG survey …

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