• Three Things For IBM i Shops To Consider About DevSecOps

  October 13, 2025 Michel Mouchon

  Way back in the Great Recession, when money was getting tight and the technical debt was getting high, the concept of agile infrastructure evolved into DevOps, the synchronization and coordination of application development, which likes to move fast, with IT operations, which likes to have things running in a stable fashion. The idea runs counter to half of the philosophy of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has espoused the principle to “move fast and break things.”

  DevOps wants to move fast, but it most assuredly does not want to break things, and many millions of programmers and operations staff …

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• Guru: A Faster Way To Sign A JWT

  July 21, 2025 Chris Ringer

  In my prior article, which you can read here, I discussed using the OpenSSL tool to asymmetrically sign a JWT. I like OpenSSL because it’s an open source solution available on many platforms and easy to use. But the decision to use OpenSSL should be coupled with the performance level expectations (the PLA) for your project.

  For instance, how many tokens will you need to create in a given interval? Will your newly minted tokens expire 24 hours from now or in 5 minutes? In my case currently, only about 5 JWTs are needed per day so …

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• Eradani Uses AI For New EDI And API Service

  May 21, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Eradani this week rolled out a new service aimed at helping customers to accelerate their EDI and API integration projects. What’s unique about its new Managed API and EDI Integration Service offerings is that it uses a large language model (LLM) to essentially take the role of the experienced integration specialist.

  Eradani has been in the data integration business since Dan Magid founded the company in 2018. The Berkeley, California, company sells a tool called Eradani Connect that seeks to eliminate the complexity of data integration challenges involving the IBM i server, and to enable users to connect the IBM …

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• IBM Bolsters Db2 for i With Tech Refreshes

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM is delivering a handful of new database capabilities with the latest batch of Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.5 and 7.4, including new function to create Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs), new capabilities for the security data mart, and various enhancements to SQL-based IBM i Services.

  A UUID is a random 36-character, 128-bit alphanumeric string that can be used to identify something, such as a row or table in a database, with near certainty that the identifier is unique, has never been used before, and will never be used again.

  The UUID system was first implemented by the Open Software …

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• Eradani Taps GenAI for IBM i Integration Boost

  October 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Eradani introduced a new product last month that uses the power of generative AI to simplify the development of code for integration projects involving IBM i. The company says the new product, dubbed Eradani Assist, will allow customers to use natural language to tell the product to build specific application and data integrations, and the product will leverage one or more large language models (LLMs) to generate the integration code.

  Eradani calls its flagship product, Eradani Connect, an “integration hub” that manages communication into and out of the IBM i platform. The software supports application and data integration projects that …

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• Open Source IBM i Build Tool Now Supports VS Code

  July 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  A new release of the open source iBuild tool now supports VS Code, the developer of the tool recently announced. The new release also now fully supports ILE, which is critical to the future of the IBM i platform, the iBuild creator says.

  iBuild is a free build tool that automates the task of running all of a developer’s RPG source code through the IBM compilers. It’s been in active development for about eight years and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net/projects/ibuild.

  What makes iBuild unique is that it puts instructions on how to build objects into the header of …

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• Guru: Web Concepts For The RPG Developer, Part 3

  July 22, 2024 Chris Ringer

  Greetings everyone. Articles part one and two were both an introduction on how to build components in an HTTP request. In part three, we will begin to connect the dots and discuss how to asymmetrically sign a simple string. If you ever need to send a secure HTTP request to a government agency or financial institution, you likely will authenticate with a signed token. So, here we go!

  Base64 Take Two

  In part one, the SQL scalar function BASE64_ENCODE embedded in RPG converted a string to base64. This technique will cover most use cases, but what if you need …

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• Guru: Parsing JSON That Has Spaces In The Key

  July 8, 2024 Mike Larsen

  One of my favorite tasks is working with APIs. I’ve worked with many APIs over the years, and some introduce unique challenges that must be overcome. Recently, I worked on a project where I was to consume a REST API that provided a JSON payload. While that seems straight forward, I quickly discovered a challenge.

  The JSON payload had keys that have spaces in them (Figure 1). That may be considered bad practice, but I still needed to figure out how I could parse it correctly. Having never seen JSON like this before, I started with a Google search. I …

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• Profound Brings GenAI Tech To IBM i Apps with Profound AI

  June 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  For more than 20 years, Profound Logic has been at the cutting edge of bringing the latest Web, mobile, and API technology to IBM i shops. With the launch of Profound AI, it’s now helping IBM i shops adopt the latest in user interface tech: natural language and generative AI.

  GenAI has taken the world by storm since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then, nearly every large enterprise has explored the potential for using large language models (LLMs) to develop a range of GenAI products, including chatbots, autonomous agents, question-and-answering systems, and knowledge management apps.

  Despite the potential …

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• ARCAD Breaks Up Monolithic Code With New Transformer Tool

  June 3, 2024 Alex Woodie

  There are many different aspects to application modernization: moving from 5250 greenscreens to Web interfaces, adopting the SQL database engine, and using DevOps techniques. Another part of modernization is breaking up monolithic codebases into smaller, more manageable chunks that can be more readily integrated using APIs and Web services, and that’s the goal of a new version of its Transformer product line launched recently by ARCAD Software.

  ARCAD Software already offers several capabilities under its Transformer brand, including Transformer RPG for converting fixed-format RPG to free-format RPG; Transformer DB for converting DDS files to modern DDL tables; Transformer Field for …

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