• A Read-Only MCP Server For Db2 for i

  October 12, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who want to let their users query Db2 for i using AI tools like Claude Desktop and Cursor, but also want to limit their access to the database, may be interested in a new open source MCP server that connects to the database in read-only mode.

  Roni Ström just wanted to be able to leverage the SQL-generation capabilities of latest AI coding assistants to be able to ask questions of Db2 for i using plain language. But the Finnish IBM i developer was becoming frustrated with the process.

  “I kept doing the same thing,” Ström wrote in …

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• Start Where the Data Lives: Best Practices for Taking IBM i Into AI

  October 5, 2026 Doug McMaster Ron Venzin and Gregg Rohaly

  The AI conversation has arrived at the IBM i shop, and in most cases, it did not come in through the computer room door. It came down from the boardroom, or over from finance, or sideways from a sales vice president who watched a demo at a conference and wants to know why the company cannot ask its own order history a question in plain English. The IBM i manager is then handed a question that sounds technical but is strategic: can our core platform play in this, or do we need to replace it to get there?

  That is …

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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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• Precisely To Add Ransomware Protection In MIMIX 11

  August 31, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Traditional high availability software that relies on real-time replication of journals is great at protecting against conventional threats, such as natural disasters or server failures. However, HA software is not so good at protecting against emerging threats, such as ransomware. That’s a weakness that Precisely is looking to address with the upcoming launch of MIMIX 11, which adds a new continuous data protection (CDP) capability.

  While the IBM i operating system is generally protected from malware designed for Windows and Linux-based systems, it’s not immune from all attacks, including ransomware attacks. If left exposed on the Internet, the Integrated File …

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• Inside The Security Enhancements In ACS

  August 24, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Keeping track of IBM i configurations and how users are using IBM i is important for security purposes. But administrators and analysts are already so overburdened with other responsibilities that it is easy to let something slip by. That is why IBM is building new SQL capabilities into Access Client Solutions, which hopefully will make it easier for IBM i shops to spot potentially damaging configs or uses before they hurt the organization.

  ACS is one of the most important tools provided by IBM for IBM i professionals, as it contains a slew of facilities for interacting with the system. …

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• What IBM’s Got Cooking In Db2 For i In The Summer TRs

  July 27, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Last week, IBM announced PTFs containing a slew of new Db2 for i features and enhancements as part of the Technology Refresh for IBM i 7.6 and 7.5. While the database is just a part of the story for IBM i 7.6 TR2 and 7.5 TR8, it’s a critical piece of the puzzle. Here’s a preview of the new stuff that you can now play with.

  As part of the summer TRs that we covered last week, IBM delivered five functional enhancements to Db2 for i as part of the Summer TR, shipped one security enhancement, one enhancement for …

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• Big Blue Finally Unveils First IBM i Tech Refreshes Of 2026

  July 20, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Well, that took a little longer than usual. Last week, IBM finally made its first IBM i Technology Refresh announcements of 2026, formally unveiling the group of updates that collectively will make up IBM i 7.6 TR2 and 7.5 TR8. With the fall TR ostensibly just three months away, the good news with the two new TRs is that the general availability date is this Friday.

  Since IBM moved to the TR cycle back in 2010, it has traditionally given the IBM i community two big updates per year, one in the spring (normally April) and one in the …

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• Big Blue Ships Bob 2.0 And Premium Package For IBM i

  July 13, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM’s push into the world of agentic coding continues, as Big Blue officially started selling and supporting major updates to its Bob agentic AI software. There are two separate but related pieces of news to cover, including the release of IBM Bob Premium Package for i and the release of Bob 2.0.

  As it is wont to do, IBM generated some confusion with its Bob launches, as both Bob 2.0 and the Bob premium packages became available on the same day, June 24. However, Bob 2.0 and the Bob premium packages are not the same thing, and their announcements were …

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• Your IBM i Jobs Don’t Live On An Island Anymore

  July 13, 2026 Rob Newman

  When I am on a call with a prospective customer, one of the first questions I ask is: Are you looking to schedule and automate IBM i jobs specifically, or do you need to incorporate all of your cross-platform dependencies? That question tends to land with a thud. Not because people don’t understand it, but because often they have never really thought about it that way.

  They have been running their IBM i jobs the way they always have, and somewhere else in the building, someone else is running Windows jobs a different way, and maybe a Linux process a …

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• Who To Consult With On Your Cloud Strategy, And Who To Manage It

  May 18, 2026 Doug McMaster and John Klockenkemper

  If you run IBM i, you already know what operational discipline looks like. Tightly governed security models. Decades of validated business logic embedded in RPG and DB2 for i. Systems of record that have been running continuously since before “the cloud” was anything more than a weather term. Your platform is not fragile – it is, in many ways, the most stable and secure thing in your data center.

  But the world around IBM i has changed. As we discussed in our previous IT Jungle article, the latest IBM i Marketplace Survey data confirms what most shops already know: …

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