• Thoroughly Modern: Why Now Is The Time To Transform Your RPG/COBOL To Modern Languages

  October 7, 2024 Chris Koppe

  RPG and COBOL run some of the most important systems in business. But while your competitors release new products and features in weeks, you wait for months. That lag time is a silent threat – one that slowly erodes your competitive edge.

  Every hour spent waiting for an update, every feature delayed, is a lost opportunity. Your systems – once considered state-of-the-art – are now rigid, slow to evolve, and difficult to integrate with new technologies. While RPG/COBOL still power critical operations, they no longer support the speed and flexibility required for today’s business. The world moves faster now, and …

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• IBM Introduces Mapepire, The New Db2 For i Client

  September 9, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM has released a new client for connecting applications to the Db2 for i database. Dubbed Mapepire, the open source client is designed to be faster, lighter weight, and easier for developers to work with compared to existing ODBC and JDBC database clients, especially in cloud environments.

  Building an application-side database client using existing Db2 for i’s database drivers, such as ODBC and JDBC (included in the JTOpen Java toolbox for IBM i) typically entails cramming a lot of overhead into the client component, says Liam Allan, who helps develop new open source development tooling at IBM.

  “For example, jtopen …

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• How To Contribute To IBM’s GenAI Code Assistant For RPG

  July 15, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Back in October 2023, IBM launched its “Project Hopper” Watsonx Code Assistant for Z, which as the name suggests is a programming assistant that will eventually be built into the open source VS Code integrated development environment that was created by Microsoft and that is being explicitly trained to help programmers take applications coded in COBOL and convert them to Java. We speculated back then about how LLMs and GenAI might be used to do similar – and different – things for the IBM i platform, and back in May at the POWERUp 2024 conference Steve Will, the chief …

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• Where Do RPG Programmers Come From? And Other IBM i Questions

  July 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  The IBM i community has faced a skills crunch off and on for the past decade or longer, as Baby Boomers retire and IBM i shops struggle to find replacements. One big reason for the hiring gap is that the old ways of finding new RPG programmers and other IBM i professionals no longer work like they used to, according to IBM i educator Jim Buck.

  “What they did for years was they just stole from the guys down the road,” said Buck, who is the president and CEO of IBM i training company imPower Technologies. ‘“I’ll go to …

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• ZendHQ Now Runs Fully on IBM i

  April 10, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops running the ZendPHP distribution of the open source programming language and runtime will be interested to know that Perforce Software recently added full support for IBM i with ZendHQ, the extension for ZendPHP that provides observability and orchestration functionality for PHP-based applications. Previously, IBM i shops had to run part of ZendHQ on Linux or Windows.

  Perforce Software originally launched ZendHQ back in June 2022 to give ZendPHP customers more visibility and control of their increasingly complex PHP environments. ZendHQ is a superset of functionality that bundles existing tools that were originally developed for Zend Server customers, …

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• What’s Up with Open Source on IBM i?

  March 27, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Open source software has become a steadfast component of the IBM i stack. But what open source software are IBM i shops using today? Results from Fortra’s recent IBM i Marketplace Survey provide answers.

  It may seem odd now, but open source hasn’t always been a staple of the IBM i server’s software diet. Until PHP arrived on the platform two decades ago, proprietary software was the only option for IBM i shops.

  But today, IBM i shops have hundreds of open source products to choose from. Thanks to the IBM i server’s openness, just about any product that can …

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• 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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• More Db2 Web Query Alternatives, And An Update

  March 11, 2024 Alex Woodie

  It has been five months since IBM abruptly killed off Db2 Web Query, the IBM i-based suite of business intelligence tools that Big Blue OEMed from Information Builders. Some customers have already settled on a replacement, but many others are still combing the market looking for a good fit.

  The product that is arguably the most well-positioned to replace Db2 Web Query is WebFOCUS, the Information Builders product on which Db2 Web Query is based. IBM had an OEM agreement with the New York-based company for more 15 years before it abruptly ended in October.

  IT Jungle has asked Information …

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• Thoroughly Modern: From Tradition To Transformation For IBM i In The Era Of Cloud And AI

  February 12, 2024 Monica Sanchez

  The value of IBM i is undeniable, especially if you are running an IBM i shop. But that does not mean IT leaders can ignore pivotal market changes in cloud, cybersecurity, and AI. These disruptive forces all have something in common – they are driving change. They are shaping operations and future strategies, pushing IT leaders to innovate.

  As we dig deeper into these transformative forces, it becomes clearer that the path forward for IBM i shops is all about continuous evolution and strategic foresight.

  Cybersecurity: Trends and Tactics

  Cybersecurity has been a major concern in the past few years. …

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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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