• 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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• PUB400: Your Free IBM i Playground

  March 4, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Search the Web for “free Linux server” and hundreds of results pop up. Do the same for “free IBM i server” and your results are much more limited. But what the universe of free IBM i servers lacks in quantity it makes up in quality thanks in large part to PUB400, a free IBM i instance that has been serving the midrange community for nearly a quarter century.

  Many IT Jungle readers undoubtedly are familiar with PUB400.com, which was started by Holger Scherer on a little AS/400 Model 150 back in 1999. Over the years, the site and the …

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• IBM i Community Shares 2024 Predictions

  January 15, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Spaceship Earth has completed another trip around the Sun, which means one thing: Time for 2024 IBM i predictions! Hopefully you enjoy this year’s predictions, which seem to sport a good mixture of optimism and realism.

  The future for IBM i is wide open – open source, that is, says Liam Allan, the creator of Code for IBM i and a software developer for IBM i.

  “My prediction is pretty simple. Businesses will continue to invest in themselves through the power of open source,” Allan says. “Whether it be using dev tools, open source runtimes like Node.js, or even newer …

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• Rocket Launches CM-Kit for Continuous Modernization

  December 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  You’ve read about continuous integration and continuous delivery, or CI-CD. Now Rocket Software wants you think about a related topic called continuous modernization, which refers to an uninterrupted re-invention of your applications via Web enablement and APIs. It recently launched a new suite of software, called the Continuous Modernization Kit, to help customers deliver that on their IBM i servers.

  Web-enablement of greenscreen 5250 applications has been a thing since at least the late 1990s, when the dot-com boom drove the initial commercialization of the Internet. That was followed closely by mobile enablement, which Apple turbocharged with its 2007 launch …

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• Old PHP and Other PASE Apps Break on IBM i 7.5

  November 15, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Customers running old versions of PHP and other PASE applications like Node.JS may run into compatibility issues when running on IBM i 7.5. The issue is due to an upgrade in OpenSSL support in the latest release of the IBM i operating system, according to Alan Seiden.

  Seiden, the principle of Seiden Group, first sounded the alarm in July about the problems running older, non-RPM versions of PHP and Node.JS on IBM i 7.5, which was upgraded from OpenSSL version 1.0.2 to version 1.1. In October, he recently published a blog post restating the issue.

  “While [the OpenSSL upgrade …

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• The First Step In DevOps Is Not Tools, But Culture Change

  September 25, 2023 Andrew Clark

  The combination and automation of application development and IT operations, commonly known as DevOps, is itself like the processes it automates – it is a process of continual change through iteration and improvement. And so, like most things in life (other than vacation, maybe), it is a journey – not a destination.

  When people think about a DevOps roadmap journey, they are typically thinking about putting in some kind of DevOps tooling like git or Jenkins; this is really not the place to start – the first step on the DevOps roadmap, for most companies, is actually a culture change. …

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• How Long Before Big Blue Brings Code Assist To IBM i?

  August 23, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  IBM Research and Big Blue’s Software group have been collaborating to bring generative AI capabilities to market through the Watsonx stack of large language models and related tools. Watsonx is a basis for customers to create customized LLMs based on data from their own businesses and to integrate the quasi-cognitive capabilities of LLMs into their applications.

  Watsonx is also being used by IBM to augment some tools of its own, and the most recent one that will be in tech preview in September and generally available sometime in the fourth quarter is called Watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which as …

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• Profound Logic Explores AI Paths for IBM i

  August 23, 2023 Alex Woodie

  The burgeoning world of artificial intelligence may seem far away to IBM i shops, but in fact, the technology is quite accessible to the users. One vendor that’s helping to guide IBM i users through the growing AI jungle is Profound Logic.

  Profound Logic is best known as an application modernization vendor, and one that provides tools for developing Web and mobile interfaces for IBM i applications, as well as working with APIs on the platform.

  In a series of YouTube videos, Profound Logic co-founder and CEO Alex Roytman provides a rundown on the latest developments in the world …

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• Generative AI Is Part Of Application Modernization Now

  August 21, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Generative AI is funny in that it is both an application in its own right when equipped with a chatbot interface and some intelligent prompting with guardrails to keep it from hallucinating and it can also be used as a tool to either generate chunks of applications based on large language models tweaked with a library of code.

  This is the first time that we can think of where the application is the tool or the tool is the application, and it presents a kind of chicken and egg conundrum for IT departments all over the world. Mainly: Where do …

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• Thoroughly Modern: Proven Strategies For Innovating IT And IBM i In A Digital Age

  June 12, 2023 Chris Koppe

  Over the past 20 years I’ve worked with countless organizations on their IBM i modernization and transformation strategies, enabling them to harness the value derived from their mission-critical applications. Transforming outdated RPG, COBOL and CA 2E (SYNON) applications not only lowers costs and mitigates risks, but it also unlocks new capabilities to innovate and future-proof your business. How are today’s organizations focusing their modernization and transformation efforts? Where should you start?

  What is Driving Innovation On IBM i?

  It’s important to begin by examining IT’s role in innovation. Over my 35+ years in the industry, I’ve worked with dozens …

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