• Guru: A Modernization Experiment Using IBM Bob 2.0

  October 5, 2026 Dan Darnell and Eric Whitcomb

  The most common use case for business applications is the CRUD model. The Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations, performed against a business database, are found almost everywhere. Behind every fancy inquiry dashboard with all the graphical bling you can muster are a slew of tried and true so-called “maintenance programs” doing the heavy lifting over the data being presented. Whether it is back-office parameter tables, customer maintenance, or order entry applications, the CRUD model is fundamental. Most of us can whip out a simple green-screen maintenance program with our eyes closed in, oh, a couple hours or so, depending …

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• PHP’s Evolution On The IBM i Platform Continues

  September 28, 2026 Alex Woodie

  PHP was one of the first open source languages and runtimes to come to IBM i way back in the early 2000s. More than two decades later, open source is thriving on IBM i with hundreds of projects, while PHP is considered a hardened, enterprise-grade language for modern Web applications. This fall will see at least one new release of PHP coming to IBM i, version 8.6, and perhaps more.

  We are all indebted to the early backers of PHP on the IBM i platform, who saw the potential for the open-source project to evolve into the sturdy business language …

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• PowerSC: Your One-Stop Shop For Security On IBM i – And Beyond

  September 21, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Keeping on top of changing security threats is difficult, to say the least. It is even harder to map changing threats to changing configurations on your IBM i server. When your IT network also includes AIX and Linux systems, the difficulty gets multiplied. For these types of environments, IBM provides a tool called PowerSC.

  When IBM launched PowerSC (which stands for security and compliance) as an IBM Lab Services product way back in 2010, it was primarily designed for setting up security configurations and running audits on AIX. That is not the case today, as the tool provides a plethora …

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• CNX Adds AI To Valence Development Tool

  May 18, 2026 Alex Woodie

  CNX is adding a new AI assistant to Valence, its no-code development environment for IBM i. The AI will provide a range of enhancements to the Valence experience, from helping with modernizing existing greenscreen applications to providing the ability for executives to “chat” with their Db2 for i data.

  Valence is a collection of tools for creating new Web and mobile applications that run on IBM i. The software features RPG procedures for integrating with existing IBM i logic, and generates JavaScript front-ends that are served by IBM i’s native HTTP Server (the one powered by Apache). Popular add-ons include …

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• Updates Announced for IBM i BRMS And SMTP Email Client

  April 20, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Big Blue hasn’t yet announced its spring IBM i Technology Refresh (TR), which we told you last week will come a bit later this year to align with IBM’s expected announcement of a new entry-level, P05-class Power11 machine. But that didn’t stop IBM from making other IBM i-related announcements last week, including some important updates to BRMS and the Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) email client.

  With its update for Backup, Recovery, and Media Services for i (BRMS), which IBM announced on April 14, IBM is bolstering the new Web GUI with updated capabilities that will make the product …

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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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• Big Blue Boosts IBM i Support In Instana, Adds Tracing

  October 6, 2025 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops that need more insight into how their hardware and software is running may want to consider IBM’s Instana software. IBM has been investing in the observability tool, which was recently updated to support traces on IBM i systems. That’s one of several upgrades IBM has made to Instana to help its IBM i customers.

  IBM acquired Instana back in November 2020 to bolster its presence in the nascent observability arena, particularly as it related to monitoring cloud-native environments (i.e., those using Kubernetes and microservices). Big Blue had just spent $34 billion to buy Red Hat and its …

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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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• Guru: AI Pair Programming In RPG With Continue

  March 10, 2025 Gregory Simmons

  In my last article, I shared a brief introduction to the GitHub Copilot extensions. These extensions provide an easy way to get up and running with an AI coding assistant to aid you in your RPG development. Being cloud based, it’s lightweight in terms of system resources, but it does cost a little money per month, per user.

  For this article, I would like to share with you what I have learned about a newer extension for VS Code named Continue. Continue runs locally on your PC, is 100 percent free, and as of this writing, is the leading …

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• What’s New on PHP? Seiden Delivers the Goods

  October 23, 2024 Alex Woodie

  PHP has been around so long on the IBM i server that it’s practically a legacy technology at this point (not that that’s a bad thing). But if you haven’t looked at PHP lately, you might be surprised at what’s going on with the newer releases. PHP guru Alan Seiden recently brought us up to speed with the Web development language with a webinar sponsored by TUG.

  Seiden has been involved with PHP on IBM i for about 20 years. He was playing around with the open source language even before IBM and Zend worked together to bring the first …

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