• PHP Decisions Loom as Original Distro Reaches End of Life

  May 24, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops have five more weeks until Zend Server Basic, the PHP runtime used by thousands of IBM i shops over the years, reaches end of life and will no longer be offered, supported, or updated with security fixes. Customers that want to continue using PHP safely beyond July 1 will need to obtain a new license or move to a new PHP runtime.

  The long history of Zend Server Basic stretches all the way back to 2006, which was the year when the PHP runtime became one of the first open source technologies to be adapted to run …

  Read more

• Guru: A Simple Script That Capitalizes on IBM i’s Open Source Capabilities

  April 26, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In my last piece, we got Yum and Bash running on IBM i. Now let’s build on that foundation to find an open campsite.

  I’m serious. Recently I used an IBM i LPAR to schedule a hiking and camping trip to the Grand Canyon. Where to begin? My bio, perhaps. Here it’s mentioned that “Rob enjoys camping, hiking, biking, and backpacking through the mountains of Arizona. . . . His favorite trip was hiking to the blue waters of Havasupai, and he is planning on hiking the Grand Canyon in the near future.”

  So last summer I went …

  Read more

• Guru: Getting Yum And Bash Up And Running

  March 15, 2021 Rob McNelly

  In the March 1 edition of The Four Hundred, I noted that an emphasis on things like system/application modernization and open source solutions gives IBM i newcomers a degree of comfort with the platform. I also made the point that no matter how long you or I have been at this, there are always people, young or not so young, who are new to the platform and come to this site seeking introductory information about various tasks and capabilities.

  With this in mind, I want to delve further into open source for those who are new to it. As …

  Read more

• Zend Server for IBM i Now 64-Bit, Available Via RPM

  January 20, 2021 Alex Woodie

  IBM i shops can now get Zend Server for IBM i via RPM, which has become the standard method for obtaining and installing open source software on the IBM i platform. The enterprise-grade PHP runtime for IBM i also now runs in 64-bit mode, according to Perforce, the owner of the Zend PHP products.

  According to the release notes for Zend Server 2020 for IBM i, the new release brings a host of new features, changes, and fixes to the product. Among the biggest changes is the adoption of RPM packaging for all components, including the IBM i specific ones …

  Read more

• MariaDB Now Available Via RPM

  December 7, 2020 Alex Woodie

  When it comes to databases for the IBM i community, Db2 for i is, and always be, number one. But there’s no reason to limit yourself to just one database, and now IBM is making it easier for IBM i shops to get their hands on MariaDB, which could be the number two database on the platform.

  MariaDB is an open source relational database that is a fork of MySQL. MySQL, of course, has been supported on the IBM i server for many years. But following Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which had acquired the company that developed MySQL, …

  Read more

• Open Source The Path To Software Riches For IBM i

  December 2, 2020 Alex Woodie

  For what is supposed to be a proprietary platform, the IBM i server sure has a lot of open source software running on it. In recent months, it appears that the majority of new programs introduced to IBM i are open source in nature. That pattern shows no signs of changing any time soon, according to a recent report by OpenLogic.

  Open software has existed on the IBM i platform for many years. The first highly publicized dip into the open source well occurred in 2005, when IBM partnered with a company called Zend to bring its PHP runtime to …

  Read more

• IBM Rolls Out ACS 1.1.8.5

  August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week introduced a new release of Access Client Solutions (ACS), the popular IBM i client that’s used by administrators, programmers, and engineers alike. There are enhancements to Run SQL Scripts, new 5250 viewing options, and a performance boost for viewing selected files on the IFS with version 1.1.8.5, among other mostly minor updates.

  According to the release notes associated with the new iteration of ACS, IBM made a handful of changes with version 1.1.8.5.

  Let’s start with the improvements to Run SQL Scripts, which is an increasingly popular utility in ACS that leverages the power of SQL and …

  Read more

• Man-DB Brings Documentation to IBM i

  August 12, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM i developers who have a question about how a particular command or feature works in open source packages now have an easy way to look up documentations, thanks to the addition of support for the Man-DB utility in IBM i, which IBM unveiled in late July.

  Man-DB is an open source implementation of the standard Unix documentation system. It provides a mechanism for easily accessing the documentation that exists for open source packages, such as the Node.js language, or even for commands, like Curl.

  The software, which can be installed via YUM, only works with open source software on …

  Read more

• More Open Source Databases Coming To IBM i

  June 15, 2020 Alex Woodie

  IBM is in the process of bringing several new open source databases to the IBM i platform, including schema-less NoSQL databases as well traditional relational systems. Among the databases that Rochester is targeting are MongoDB, arguably the most popular NoSQL database and a favorite among Web and mobile developers, as well as PostgreSQL, one of the industry’s oldest and most widely used relational databases.

  Databases today almost are like programming languages, with developers mixing and matching databases to handle different functions, often within the same application. DB-Engines.com tracks more than 330 distinct databases, while there are somewhere around 700 programming …

  Read more

• Get Your PHP on IBM i, Hold the Zend

  December 11, 2019 Alex Woodie

  PHP was one of the first open source technologies to make an impact on the IBM i server. But due to the arrangement that IBM made with Zend, the PHP technology has been tied to a specific software distribution controlled by Zend. But now, IBM i shops that want to use PHP but don’t want to pay for the Zend Server distribution after the first free year of support is up now have a free option available – and it’s from the Zend folks themselves, no less.

  On December 2, the folks at Zend posted a repository for Community PHP …

  Read more

Previous Articles