• Guru: AI Pair Programming In RPG With GitHub Copilot

  February 17, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  If you have been meaning to give VS Code a try, but just haven’t had a chance, I encourage you to avail yourself today. Yes, for you RDi users, it will take a little bit to migrate your favorite settings, code snippets, and compile commands – but I promise, you won’t regret the move.

  In my article, Getting Started With The Code 4 i Extension Within VS Code, I offer a few more insights to help get you started. And if you are an SEU user, yes, the switch may seem daunting, but one of the great things about …

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• IBM Announcements: Service Price Hikes, HANA Iron As A Service, Rust for AIX And Maybe PASE, And More. . .

  February 17, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  When Big Blue makes big announcements, we break them down and analyze them uniquely. But there are often a lot of little things that happen over the course of a few weeks, and we like to lump these together and give you the rundown. That way you are informed, but you can skim it.

  So let’s take a look the things related to Power Systems and IBM i that have happened in the past few weeks since we last did this. Let’s start with a few price changes.

  In announcement letter AD25-0140, dated February 3 and effective on March …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 7

  February 17, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  How secure you feeling today? Well, IBM i is generally pretty rock solid, but you have to stay on top of the security vulnerabilities. And there are two of them that are new this week.

  First, we have Security Bulletin: IBM Java SDK and IBM Java Runtime for IBM i are vulnerable to a partial denial of service and a JNI function returning incorrect value length due to multiple vulnerabilities. You can find out more about this issue at this link, and here are the patches for it:

  IBM i Release                         PTF Group

  7.5                                             SF99955 Level 13

  7.4                                             SF99665 …

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• State Of The Power Systems Base 2025: The Operating Systems

  February 10, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  What is more important: Keeping a server platform current or keeping its operating system current?

  That is a trick question, and it is tricky in two ways. First, you should keep both hardware and software current, or more precisely, keep both as current as the applications, the budget, and good sense permits. A server older than five years is going to start having component failure (usually with the disk drives and fans), and one that is 10years old has the chance of a much more catastrophic failure. However, with a machine that is five to ten years old, you can …

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• ARCAD Discover: Global Application Analysis With An AI Interface

  February 10, 2025 Michel Mouchon

  Here is a simple test to reckon the value of the applications that run your company. Walk down to the datacenter, or over to the datacloset, or SSH out to the cloud, and turn the physical or logical machine running those applications off. What happens next?

  Aside from a lot of animated conversations and possibly some cursing, not much until you turn the machine back on and the system, databases, and applications reboot. You already knew this, but now everyone else has discovered, rather suddenly, how the very existence of the business and the livelihoods of the employees is dependent …

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• Rocket Consolidates Half a Dozen Terminal Emulators With Secure Host Access

  February 10, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software has rolled out Secure Host Access, a new terminal emulator for utilizing the classic greenscreen interfaces of heritage IBM i, mainframe, and Unix applications. The new offering consolidates multiple emulators acquired by Rocket over the years into a single offering, while delivering much-needed security features that the previous emulators largely lacked.

  Rocket Software’s Secure Host Access is a terminal emulator that provides a full array of TN5250, TS3270, and VT connectivity from PCs, Web browsers, and mobile devices. The Java-based product offers all the features and capabilities that you would expect to find in a mature emulator, …

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• IBM Christens Its 2025 Class Of Champions

  February 10, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue has declared a new roster of IBM Champions, those heroes among us who display expertise in technical subject matters, are tireless advocates of IBM platforms, and otherwise exhibit excellence in their work. Members of the IBM i ecosystem, as usual, are well represented in the program, even if the platform doesn’t have its own category. IBM also refreshed the badges it distributes as part of the related IBM Rising Champion Advocacy program.

  A quick check of the 2025 IBM Champion web page shows there are 1,035 IBM Champions around the world in this, the 17th year of the …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 27, Number 6

  February 10, 2025 Doug Bidwell

  It is a quiet week as far as security vulnerabilities go, so if you are in North America, or you like American football, we hope you enjoyed Super Bowl LIX and know that there is nothing too serious you need to handle right now with your IBM i system. There are some new HIPERs and patches to Java and the Apace Web server.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Java
  • IBM HTTP Server for i

  PTF Groups 7.4:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)
  • Java
  • IBM HTTP

  …

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• Izzi Throws Retiring IBM i Software Company Founders A Lifeline

  February 3, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Founders of smaller IBM i and System z software vendors who are looking to sell their companies before they retire may want to check out a new venture called Izzi Software. In an interview with IT Jungle, the executives heading the startup explain that it has a mandate to spend millions of private equity dollars on acquiring midrange and mainframe ISVs that have solid products and businesses, but may not be big enough to attract M&A attention from bigger firms.

  It’s no secret that the IBM i and System z communities tend toward the older side of the age …

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• IBM Power On Track To Get Above $2 Billion A Year

  February 3, 2025 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM’s stock price is kissing $260 a share, and this is a level that, adjusted for stock splits, the company has not seen since before it ran up on the rocks in the early 1990s as its mainframe business and AS/400 business all shrank at the same time that RISC/Unix systems and X86 gear in the datacenter took off. What’s going on?

  Well, here is the deal: IBM has customers using its Power and z servers for mission-critical back office systems, and a lot of the customers using its IBM i, AIX, Linux, and z/OS platforms are going to be …

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