• Startup Seeks The “Golden Path” for IBM i Modernization

  April 13, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops looking for a partner to help with RPG modernization may want to check out Golden Path Digital. The startup recently announced a modernization initiative dubbed AS/Forward that includes a mix of code documentation and AI-powered code conversion tools, all wrapped up with professional services, to give IBM i shops a lifeline for aging RPG apps.

  Golden Path Digital was founded last year in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, by two business partners, Aaron Balentine and Ty Woods. An AI engineer at a local lumber company that runs on the IBM i platform, Valentine is the technical one, while …

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• IBM Gets Bob 1.0 Off The Ground

  March 2, 2026 Alex Woodie

  IBM this month finally will get a coding co-pilot into the hands of its IBM i installed base with the launch of Bob. The general availability of Bob 1.0.0 on March 24 will mark the end of the long wait for IBM i customers – and in particular, the large population of RPG developers – to start using IBM-branded AI software to maintain and develop IBM i software.

  The world of generative AI moves quickly, as the large language models (LLMs) from frontier providers improve on a weekly, if not daily, basis. This is both exciting, as the capabilities of …

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• Bob More Than Just A Code Assistant, IBM i Chief Architect Will Says

  December 1, 2025 Alex Woodie

  When IBM i professionals finally get their hands on Bob, the new AI-powered tool currently in development in Big Blue’s labs, they will find that it is much more than just a code assistant, IBM i chief Architect Steve Will said recently. “It has a lot of knowledge,” he said. “It knows things about IBM i.”

  While precise details about the timing of the release of Bob are slim, IBM is widely expected to release a public preview of the new AI-powered plug-in for VS Code in early 2026. The new software, which was unveiled in early October around the …

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• Fresche Taps AI For New RPG-To-Java Conversion Tool

  November 10, 2025 Alex Woodie

  Fresche Solutions has launched X-Modernize AI, a new offering that uses generative AI technology to convert legacy RPG and Synon code to modern Java. The software, which is based on large language models and its X-Analysis cross-reference and code understanding tool, will speed up code conversion projects by a significant amount, the company claims.

  Fresche Solutions is no stranger to legacy modernization projects and tools that convert RPG code into languages like Java, PHP, and .NET. In fact, the company’s very first announcement after it changed its name from Speedware to Fresche Legacy way back in 2012 was the acquisition …

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• IBM Just Killed Merlin. Here’s Why

  October 20, 2025 Alex Woodie

  The writing had been on the wall for some time, and IBM finally made it official as part of the Technology Refresh for IBM i on October 7. That was when Big Blue announced the immediate withdrawal from marketing and service for its Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration product, commonly called Merlin. It will likely go down in IBM i history as a well-intentioned product that got some things right, but which ultimately could not overcome its flaws.

  The introduction of Merlin back in May 2022 represented a sizable shift in IBM’s approach to application development on IBM i. Prior …

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• How To Have The Wisdom Of Experts Woven Into Your Code

  October 14, 2024 Nicholas DeLessio

  No matter how far you are down the road with your DevOps automation journey, or even if you’re not yet starting that journey, it’s probably a good idea to have a code checker; not everyone can have a Linus Torvalds review their work (as famously happens with the open source Linux kernel), but there are automation tools available for various languages and platforms that do static code analysis and they are the next best thing.

  These tools, sometimes called “code linters” (because they remove the fuzzy bits out of application logic like actual linters remove imperfections stuck to our clothing), …

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• Untangling Legacy Spaghetti Code To Cook Up Microservices

  August 12, 2024 Michel Mouchon

  At this point in the history of programming, everyone pretty much knows what microservices are and everybody is more than acquainted with the legacy code – and often monolithic code – that has been created over decades by countless programmers who have evolved corporate applications to fit new conditions and new demands.

  It is often called spaghetti code, and for good reason. The code is often a tangled mess of business logic and data – presumably the data is the meatballs and the user interface is the sauce in this metaphor. (It is important to not take a metaphor too …

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• Guru: The Transition From Modern RPG IV To Modern SQL

  October 30, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  Seven or eight years ago I was working with a client who needed more contemporary reporting than provided by the legacy Query/400 product. Initially I looked at Db2 Web Query and realized the documentation was sparse and the tutorials for most things, even “getting started” were virtually non-existent. It was also about four times more expensive than I felt it was worth to a P05 or P10 client. I mentioned the documentation issue to the folks at IBM and they agreed. Some of it was eventually resolved, but not enough in my opinion to get the masses to replace Query/400 …

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• Guru: Generating XML Using SQL – The Easy Way

  September 18, 2023 Bob Cozzi

  There are many verbose methods of generating XML. You can:

  • Write your own RPG code
  • Using a free or third-party API
  • Use SQL iQuery OUTPUT(*XML) option
  • Use the built-in SQL XML functions such as XMLELEMENT

  I’m sure there are others, but these seem to be the most popular.

  For years I had been using the XMLELEMENT approach; a rather verbose set of XML function built into Db2 for i SQL. In fact, SQL iQuery’s OUTPUT(*XML) is based on that feature. It simply regenerates your SQL statement using XMLELEMENT statements for each output column/field name.

  But if you’re using something IBM …

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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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