A new release of the open source iBuild tool now supports VS Code, the developer of the tool recently announced. The new release also now fully supports ILE, which is critical to the future of the IBM i platform, the iBuild creator says. iBuild is a free build tool that automates the task of running all of a developer’s RPG source code through the IBM compilers. It’s been in active development for about eight years and can be downloaded from sourceforge.net/projects/ibuild. What makes iBuild unique is that it puts instructions on how to build objects into the header of … The post Open Source I ..read more

A handful of new capabilities have been released for PowerHA customers over the past few months, including support for asynchronous policy-based replication in FlashSystem, new administrative functions, support for SQL services, and the addition of new management functions in an updated Web interface. As IBM notes in its announcement letter for IBM i 7.5 TR4, there is a long history of integration between PowerHA SystemMirror for IBM i and IBM Spectrum Virtualize, the software for managing IBM FlashSystem SAN arrays. This tradition includes native support in PowerHA for various Spectrum Virtua ..read more

InterForm A/S, the Danish output management vendor whose products are resold by Infor and other application vendors, has sold a majority stake of itself to VIA equity, a private equity firm also based in Denmark. InterForm says it will use the investment to accelerate business development around the world. InterForm A/S has been targeting IBM midrange systems with its output management software since the company was founded back in 1987. While it supports open systems today, it has more than 4,000 installations on IBM i and predecessor systems, which makes InterForm arguably the most heavily u ..read more

If you’re looking for some respite from the political news of the day, you have come to the right spot. Fortunately for us, there is no shortage of news in our industry, either. IBM had a good week when it came to the Crowdstrike debacle that led to the “blue screen of death” for many Windows users and worldwide outages. And we’re happy to share all the new blogs, training, and other resources that are popping up all around our ecosystem where it seems companies are pushing forward with purpose and remaining focused on their goals and the road ahead. … The post Four Hundred Monitor, July 24 ap ..read more

When it comes to security, more is often better. As in, more security professionals running more security products and services that deliver more overlapping coverage of your security weaknesses. The good news for IBM i shops is that Fortra delivers more solutions with more coverage than probably anyone else in the industry, particularly with its XDR solution. XDR, or extended detection and response, is the state of the art for enterprise security today, and essentially is replacing security information and event management (SIEM) tools at the top of the security food chain, says Tom Huntingto ..read more

Last October, with no warning at all, IBM suddenly pulled the plug on its Db2 Web Query business intelligence tool for the IBM i platform. This left a lot of customers in the lurch, since Db2 Web Query is based on but very different from the WebFOCUS business intelligence tool from Information Builders. IBM and Information Builders, we later learned, could not come to terms on how to re-license the WebFOCUS engine at the heart of Db2 Web Query, and thus far, IBM has not provided an alternative BI platform or a migration tool for any third-party applications. The upshot … The post Future-Proof ..read more

Greetings everyone. Articles part one and two were both an introduction on how to build components in an HTTP request. In part three, we will begin to connect the dots and discuss how to asymmetrically sign a simple string. If you ever need to send a secure HTTP request to a government agency or financial institution, you likely will authenticate with a signed token. So, here we go! Base64 Take Two In part one, the SQL scalar function BASE64_ENCODE embedded in RPG converted a string to base64. This technique will cover most use cases, but what if you need … The post Guru: Web Concepts For The ..read more

If there is one frequently overlooked source of workplace discontent it involves the quality of communication. Or the lack of it. On a corporate level, pronouncements seem predictably boilerplate lacking authenticity if not veracity, more suited to limiting liability than guiding behavior. Everyone, for example, touts their commitment to customer service. But customers must often navigate draconian phone trees and endure excessive wait times before being connected to a helpful human. The disconnect between what is said and what is experienced is based on two sets of competing values: Professed ..read more

Welcome to this week, which is a very, very quiet week, even for the IBM i PTF Guide. Like, hardly anything at all is happening. There are a few little things, which we will now point out. Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published: PTF Groups 7.5: Fix list for IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty MustGather: How To Obtain and Install QMGTOOLS PTF Groups 7.4: Fix list for IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty MustGather: How To Obtain and Install QMGTOOLS PTF Groups 7.3: Fix list for IBM WebSphere Application Server … The post IBM i PTF Guide ..read more

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 … The post How To Contrib ..read more