• Bob 1.0 Users Bugged By Lack Of One Feature

  April 6, 2026 Alex Woodie

  The launch of the Bob AI coding tool in late March has been met with considerable amount of hoopla by IBM, as well as anticipation by the IBM i community. The early reception to Bob has been mixed, due in part to the lack of one particular feature.

  Bob is a new AI tool from IBM that’s designed to help developers understand, document, and generate code in a variety of languages and platforms. On the IBM i server, Bob supports RPG, as well as CL, SQL, DDS, and COBOL, while it supports other languages on other platforms. IBM introduced Bob …

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• What IBM i Ideas Are Cooking In IBM’s Ideas Portal?

  March 30, 2026 Alex Woodie

  It is early spring, which means we are getting close to Technology Refresh (TR) time. What new functionality will IBM add to the IBM i operating system and related products? Nobody knows except IBM and its closest business partners, but we can get an idea of what might be cooking in the next IBM i TR by checking out the IBM Ideas Portal.

  The IBM Ideas Portal was implemented back in 2022 to replace the IBM Request for Enhancement (RFE) process, which IBM formalized with a Web-based voting and ranking system back in 2016. The Ideas Portal works as …

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• Early Bob Excels In Medhost IBM i Tryout

  March 30, 2026 Alex Woodie

  One of the early testers of the IBM Bob AI tool is Medhost, the longtime developer of an integrated IBM i-based healthcare applications for community and rural hospitals. According to a joint presentation between IBM and the software vendor last week, the beta test was a success, as Bob assisted Medhost in not only understanding its RPG and SQL codebases, but modernizing and enhancing them.

  IBM i chief architect Steve Will was joined by Michael Bowen, the senior vice president of technology at Medhost, in a webinar last week to discuss how the provider of electronic health records (EHR) …

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• IBM Taps Nvidia GPUs For AI-Turbocharged Data Mart

  March 23, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company thanks to its powerful GPUs, which can be used to train massive AI models containing trillions of parameters. But those GPUs can also be used to accelerate traditional SQL analytics on structured data sitting in a data lake, as IBM’s customer Nestlé found out in a recent deployment.

  Nestlé is the world’s largest food manufacturer, with more than 2,000 brands and operations spanning 186 countries. The Swiss company, which recorded revenues of CHF 89.5 billion ($113.5 billion at current exchange rates), operates 335 factories and employs about 271,000 people.

  The company, which is …

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• What Is Threatening IBM i Security Now

  March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  The nature of cybersecurity threats is always changing, which requires constant vigilance by those who value security. IBM i is just as exposed to threats as any other networked operating system on the planet, but it’s also unique in certain ways, which actually makes security harder. To get the lowdown on how these phenomena interrelate in the first quarter of 2026, we turn to renown IBM i security expert Carol Woodbury from Kisco.

  Woodbury recently sat down with Justin Loeber, the Kisco owner and head of business development, to present a webinar titled IBM i Threat Landscape 2026: A Fireside …

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• GiAPA Tracks SQL Performance Issues On IBM i

  March 16, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Tracking down SQL performance problems with IBM i applications sometimes can be difficult, thanks to the mysterious ways that IBM’s Db2 query optimizer works. To help shine a light on changes the optimizer may suddenly make to query access plans, the IBM i performance experts behind GiAPA developed a new tool, dubbed SQL Observer.

  The Db2 query optimizer is a wonder of software engineering. The IBMers who developed it deserve a ton of credit for creating a smart piece of software that keeps SQL queries running so efficiently. Users simply submit the query they want to run, and the …

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• Guru: IBM i Job Log Detective Brings Structure To Job Log Analysis In VS Code

  March 9, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  Remain Software has released a new Visual Studio Code extension called IBM i Job Log Detective, and it targets a pain point every IBM i developer understands: reading job logs efficiently.

  In addition to its marketplace availability, IBM i Job Log Detective is open source under the MIT license and can be found on GitHub at: https://github.com/RemainSoftware/jld

  There has never been anything wrong with IBM i job logs themselves. They are exhaustive, consistent, and remarkably detailed. When something fails, the job log contains the truth. The issue has always been consumption. Large QPJOBLOG files can run thousands of lines (or …

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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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• 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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• Guru: Access Client Solutions 1.1.9.11 – Security First, With Continued Investment In SQL Tooling

  January 26, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  Big Blue has released IBM i Access Client Solutions (ACS) version 1.1.9.11, and while the release is anchored by an important security fix, it also reflects IBM’s continued investment in the SQL tooling that has become central to day-to-day IBM i development and administration. This is not a feature-heavy update on its own, but it arrives after a series of releases that have steadily expanded the usefulness of both Run SQL Scripts and SQL Performance Center.

  The primary driver for upgrading to ACS 1.1.9.11 is the remediation of CVE-2025-66516, an XML External Entity vulnerability related to how ACS processes certain …

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