• The Big Easy: Connecting The Dots On Big Blue’s AI Strategy For IBM i

  May 4, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM has not yet formally announced the new AI products that it is building for IBM i. We know about Bob and the MCP server, but there is a lot more AI stuff coming to IBM i. IBM shared details of what is coming in closed sessions at POWERUp in New Orleans last week, but hints about where it is going and what is coming were there, if you knew where to look.

  IBM i, as we all know, is a business platform. It runs enterprise applications and it runs them extremely well. If you want to model a nuclear …

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• CData Adds Db2 for i Support to CDC Tool

  April 27, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that need to quickly move data from their database to other systems for AI, analytics, or operational uses may be interested in recent news out of CData. The company announced that it’s now supporting Db2 for i with Sync, its real-time change data capture (CDC) product.

  CData Software is a Cherry Hill, North Carolina-based company that has been building data integration software since it was founded in 2010. In addition to database drivers (ODBC, JDBC, OLE DB), database connectors, and embedded solutions, the company develops a data integration platform dubbed Sync that provides a range of CDC, …

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• GiAPA Tracks SQL Performance Issues On IBM i

  March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Tracking down SQL performance problems with IBM i applications sometimes can be difficult, thanks to the mysterious ways that IBM’s Db2 query optimizer works. To help shine a light on changes the optimizer may suddenly make to query access plans, the IBM i performance experts behind GiAPA developed a new tool, dubbed SQL Observer.

  The Db2 query optimizer is a wonder of software engineering. The IBMers who developed it deserve a ton of credit for creating a smart piece of software that keeps SQL queries running so efficiently. Users simply submit the query they want to run, and the …

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• IBM Launches Hybrid Cloud Backup Product With Cobalt Iron

  March 9, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM and its business partner Cobalt Iron last week announced the launch of a new cloud backup product. Dubbed Secure Automated Backup with Compass for IBM Cloud, the new SaaS offering can protect data residing across customers’ landscape, including IBM Cloud, other clouds, and on-prem systems like IBM i.

  Cobalt Iron was founded in 2013 with the goal of modernizing backup and recovery. Founder Richard Spurlock saw that companies were spending too much time with platform-specific backup products, so he decided to build a centralized virtual tape library (VTL) solution that could back up and recover data across a range …

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• IBM Unveils Expert Query To Replace Db2 Web Query

  February 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM’s Technology Expert Labs is launching IBM Database Expert Query for i, a new tool that allows users to create and run reports against the integrated Db2 for i database from the comfort of a Web browser. IBM is positioning Expert Query as a replacement for Db2 Web Query, the business intelligence and analytics tool that it abruptly killed more than two years ago.

  Expert Query was developed over the past year by Technology Expert Labs (formerly Lab Services). We have heard rumblings that Big Blue was gearing up a replacement for the well-liked Db2 Web Query product, and it …

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• Why The IBM i Market Needed Another VTL Option

  November 3, 2025 Greg Tevis

  Over many decades now, the IBM i community of software vendors has done a great job coming up with new ways to extend and improve the systems that IBM has built for midrange customers. But every once in a while, a new idea comes into the IBM i community from the outside.

  So it is with Compass Tape Gateway from Cobalt Iron, which modernizes IBM i backup by replacing traditional VTL complexity with an automated, software‑defined experience. It treats IBM i as a first‑class part of enterprise data protection – not a silo – so teams get simpler operations, …

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• Stelo Touts Data Replication For IBM i In Azure Cloud

  September 29, 2025 Alex Woodie

  If you are in the market for data replication software for IBM i, you might want to check out Stelo (formerly StarQuest). The company has supported the IBM i server for many years, and recently announced that its software is available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

  Stelo got its start back in 1992, when Paul Rampel founded StarQuest to develop data connectivity tools for IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems environments. The company launched the Host Data Replicator (HDR) product in 1998, when was adapted with real-time capabilities to become the StarQuest Data Replicator (SQDR) product in 2001.

  In 2022, StarQuest …

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• IBM Streamlines Data Migration With New Partition Mirror Tech

  July 28, 2025 Alex Woodie

  There is a brand new technology available for migrating data from one IBM i partition to another as part of IBM’s new Migrate While Active tool. It’s called partition mirror, and it gives IBM i shops a potentially less disruptive method for moving data across distances both long and short.

  IBM first unveiled its new Migrate While Active product in October 2024 as part of its announcement introducing subscriptions for the PowerHA high availability and Db2 Mirror continuous availability products. The co-mingling of the announcements made some sense when you consider that the original Migrate While Active product utilized a …

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• Profound Logic Adds MCP To IBM i AI Tool

  July 28, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The world of AI is moving extremely fast right now, with new models, techniques, and technologies emerging every week. One of the newest bits of AI tech to catch on is Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), which has quickly become a defacto standard for connecting data sources to AI models. Profound Logic, which has been on the cutting edge of AI, is the first IBM i vendor to bring MCP support to the server and the Db2 for i database.

  Anthropic quietly launched Model Context Protocol in late November 2024 as a way to enable large language models (LLMs), such …

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• Say Goodbye To Downtime: Update Your Database Without Taking Your Business Offline

  May 5, 2025 Donna Westmoreland

  Downtime is costly, impacting productivity, revenue, and customer trust. For retailers and financial institutions, even a few minutes can mean significant losses. This is why enterprises rely on IBM i Db2 for mission-critical systems. IBM i offers 99.999 percent availability, high stability, robust failover strategies, and real-time monitoring to reduce unplanned downtime.

  However, planned downtime for critical updates and projects is also necessary. The challenge lies in scheduling this maintenance and upgrades without disrupting business applications. So, how can we utilize new functionality and optimize systems with minimal disruption?

  Database File Updates

  It is not surprising that businesses tend to …

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