• How To Contribute To IBM’s GenAI Code Assistant For RPG

  July 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in October 2023, IBM launched its “Project Hopper” Watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which as the name suggests is a programming assistant that will eventually be built into the open source VS Code integrated development environment that was created by Microsoft and that is being explicitly trained to help programmers take applications coded in COBOL and convert them to Java. We speculated back then about how LLMs and GenAI might be used to do similar – and different – things for the IBM i platform, and back in May at the POWERUp 2024 conference Steve Will, the chief …

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• Where Do RPG Programmers Come From? And Other IBM i Questions

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i community has faced a skills crunch off and on for the past decade or longer, as Baby Boomers retire and IBM i shops struggle to find replacements. One big reason for the hiring gap is that the old ways of finding new RPG programmers and other IBM i professionals no longer work like they used to, according to IBM i educator Jim Buck.

  “What they did for years was they just stole from the guys down the road,” said Buck, who is the president and CEO of IBM i training company imPower Technologies. ‘“I’ll go to …

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• Thoroughly Modern: The Synon Transformation Journey, From Legacy To Modern Java Solutions

  July 8, 2024 Chris Koppe

  In today’s evolving tech landscape, companies that run CA 2E (Synon) on IBM i face significant challenges hindering progress and sustainability. Synon represents a fraction of the market share in IBM i environments, far behind RPG and COBOL, and IBM’s recent announcement to cease PL/I support in future OS versions will impact compliance for SOX-regulated and other industries.

  Moreover, shifts in ownership – from Computer Associates to Broadcom – cast doubt on Synon’s long-term viability and continued support. A dwindling pool of Synon developers, brittle applications that are difficult to integrate with modern technologies, and cryptic database structures further add …

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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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• Rocket Finally Gets Its RUMBA, And A Whole Lot More

  June 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Sixteen years is a long time to wait, but that’s how long it took Rocket Software to acquire the assets of what used to be NetManage, which includes the popular 5250 emulator RUMBA. Rocket failed to buy NetManage back in February 2008, but it finally completed the deal for the NetManage assets in May 2024. And it got a whole lot more in a $2.275 billion deal that netted it about half of OpenText’s Micro Focus assets and puts its revenue over the mark of $1 billion per year.

  Micro Focus, you will recall, was the company that swooped in …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 21

  June 10, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  Once again, here is a reminder that a big change has come to patching IBM i systems. IBM i APAR and PTF records have migrated to Known Issues records and Fix Information records to be consistent with other IBM patching systems for other platforms and software. So read up on it at this link.

  We also have one new security vulnerability that you need to be aware of since we last published the IBM i PTF Guide. The vulnerability is outlined in Security Bulletin: Denial of service vulnerabilities in Node.js affects IBM Rational Developer for i RPG and …

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• IBM Developing AI Coding Assistant for IBM i

  May 22, 2024 Alex Woodie

  During his keynote presentation at the POWERUp 2024 conference Monday, IBM i CTO Steve Will announced that IBM is actively exploring ways to incorporate generative AI into the IBM i platform. The most promising of three individual but related projects is a plan to build a large language model (LLM)-powered coding assistant for IBM i that will initially provide three functions to support RPG development, with more expected in the future.

  The genesis of the coding assisting project for RPG, which doesn’t have a name yet, can be traced to last year’s launch of watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which …

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• What’s Up with Open Source on IBM i?

  March 27, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Open source software has become a steadfast component of the IBM i stack. But what open source software are IBM i shops using today? Results from Fortra’s recent IBM i Marketplace Survey provide answers.

  It may seem odd now, but open source hasn’t always been a staple of the IBM i server’s software diet. Until PHP arrived on the platform two decades ago, proprietary software was the only option for IBM i shops.

  But today, IBM i shops have hundreds of open source products to choose from. Thanks to the IBM i server’s openness, just about any product that can …

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• What the 2024 Marketplace Report Says About IBM i App Dev, Language Use

  March 13, 2024 Alex Woodie

  What languages, development environments, and tools are IBM i developers currently using to create new applications? How many users are still on SEU? And how are VS Code and Merlin faring among Web-based development tools? Fortra sought to answer those questions with its IBM i Marketplace Survey for 2024, and the results may surprise you.

  In late 2023, Fortra surveyed 270 IBM i professionals from around the world for the 2024 IBM i Marketplace Survey, which it published in January. You can download the report here.

  For the most part, Fortra asks the same questions every year, which is …

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• AWS Inks Deal With Connectria To Have a Power Play

  November 15, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The long road of history has not been made impassible by the charred marketing tanks and flaming sales assault vehicles of those who have tried to breach Fortress Rochester, but there are a whole lot of rusting machines off on the horizon cluttering the road and more than a few smoking machines nearby as well as some sizable holes in the ramparts out on that cornfield in Minnesota.

  While the proprietary minicomputer businesses and the Unix server businesses of the competition of the AS/400 and IBM i platform have all been destroyed and that IBM is indeed the last bastion …

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