• Learning And Laughing With Scott Forstie And Tim Rowe

  December 8, 2025 Alex Woodie

  In the darkest days of the 2020 pandemic, with COVID lockdowns in full force, IBM i business architects Tim Rowe and Scott Forstie decided to try something new: start a video blog. Dubbed iSee, the short videos blend serious technical content around ACS and SQL services with goofy puns and silly drawings. Fast forward to fall 2025, and iSee is going strong, as the pair recently aired their 100th iSee episode.

  “Scott and I have been thinking about some fun things that we want to talk about to help you in your every day job,” Rowe said in the very …

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• What You Will Find In IBM i 7.6 TR1 and IBM i 7.5 TR7

  October 13, 2025 Alex Woodie

  It’s early October, which means leaves are changing colors, nights are getting colder, and IBM developers in southern Minnesota and elsewhere are gearing up the autumnal Technology Refreshes for the IBM i operating system.

  With last week’s announcements of TR1 for IBM i 7.6 and TR7 for IBM i 7.5, which ship November 21, IBM has committed to delivering a slew of updates and new functionality across the range of IBM i system software, from application development to administration.

  Before we get into the specific areas of IBM i, let’s cover the general enhancements it made with I/O handling. For …

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• Big Blue Delivers IBM i Customer Requests In ACS Update

  August 25, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Christmas is still four months away, but that didn’t stop IBM from giving Access Client Solutions (ACS) customers the new features they requested. The deliveries were made in the mid-summer update, ACS version 1.1.9.9.

  ACS is the must-have tool that lives in every IBM i professional’s toolbox. It contains a slew of facilities for interacting with the system, including RSS, data transfer, IFS file viewing, spool file management, 5250 emulator, 5250 printer emulation, and a virtual console for LAN and HMC management.

  IBM updates ACS several times a year regardless of the Technology Refresh cycle, as is typical with several …

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• RPG Code Generation And The Agentic Future Of IBM i

  June 2, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM is making progress with Watsonx Code Assistant for i, which is on track to become available as a public preview next month. And while IBM perhaps is running into some challenges with generating RPG code, the long-term potential of agentic AI on IBM i is brighter than ever.

  As we previously reported, IBM is now taking names for the folks who will be given access to the public preview of WCA for i, which you can sign up for here. According to IBM i CTO Steve Will, the preview will deliver RPG code understanding capabilities, which is …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 15

  April 14, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  There are so many announcements, and one of the big ones is ACS 1.1.9.8! We downloaded the new ACS and we have used this for a day, and so far there are no known issues at this time. We suggest treading lightly with this tool until after general availability on April 18. But it is looking good so far, though!

  There is also a new security vulnerability, which is Security Bulletin: IBM i is vulnerable to an out-of-bounds write in NTP services due to multiple vulnerabilities. More information available at this link. The issue can be addressed by applying …

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• Steve Will Lifts the Curtain On “Major IBM i Announcement,” But Just A Smidge

  March 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

  If you haven’t heard yet, here it is: IBM is planning to make a major IBM i announcement soon. IBM i chief architect Steve Will said as much during his recent IBM i Guided Tour. While Will shared a general outline of what IBM has in mind for the major announcement, specifics still are few and far between.

  Will, who also holds the titles of IBM i CTO and IBM distinguished engineer, teased the IBM i community with his one-hour February 12 presentation, which is titled IBM i in 2025 – A Strategic Preview. You can access a recording …

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• ACS Password Leaks Are A Security Issue On IBM i

  February 17, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that are relying on the old WINLOGON process with their Access Client Solutions (ACS) installations will need to find a new way to synchronize passwords between Windows clients and IBM i servers. According to a new report from Silent Signal, the passwords could still be compromised.

  In early January, Big Blue published an IBM Support document about problems that IBM i shops were having after they applied the Windows 11 24H2 update, which Microsoft had started rolling out in October 2024. IBM i customers who used the ACS Windows Application Package told IBM they were no longer …

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• Guru: Creating An RPG Stored Procedure With Parameters

  January 20, 2025 Mike Larsen

  There are times we need to build processes that will be used across different platforms. An example is a pricing routine. When a system needs to get pricing, we need to make sure the price the customer pays is the same regardless of how the order was created in our system.

  One way to create this functionality is using web services. Another way we can provide this functionality is through stored procedures. This series of tips will focus on different ways we can build stored procedures on IBM i.

  For the first part, I created an RPG program (Figure 1) …

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• What’s New on PHP? Seiden Delivers the Goods

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  PHP has been around so long on the IBM i server that it’s practically a legacy technology at this point (not that that’s a bad thing). But if you haven’t looked at PHP lately, you might be surprised at what’s going on with the newer releases. PHP guru Alan Seiden recently brought us up to speed with the Web development language with a webinar sponsored by TUG.

  Seiden has been involved with PHP on IBM i for about 20 years. He was playing around with the open source language even before IBM and Zend worked together to bring the first …

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• Surprise! It’s 2024 Fall TR Time for IBM i

  October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM announced the Technology Refreshes (TRs) for IBM i version 7.5 and 7.4 yesterday, bringing a host of new capabilities to the proprietary operating system. As expected, the surprise update covers a range of IBM i facilities, including Db2, Navigator, ACS, PowerHA, and the development tools.

  Navigator gets several more enhancements with the new TRs, including: a new dashboard with software licensing information; Web-based administration of network facilities; support for monitoring of Java 11 and Java 17 jobs; enhancements to the Performance Data Investigator (PDI); and new options for working with audit journals, among other capabilities.

  IBM also includes the …

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