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This week I am helping a client migrate their trusty old AS/400 to a shiny brand-new Power System in the Cloud – disclaimer “they call it an AS400, not me” 😉 This glorious old machine has been quietly running IBM-i V7R1, unattended in the corner of a darkened office for a decade. The system admin …
VPN, in plain English A VPN is a private tunnel across the public internet. Think of the internet as a busy high street. Without a VPN, your staff walk that street carrying the company keys. Anyone standing nearby can watch. With a VPN they go through a locked corridor. Same destination. Far fewer strangers. That …
I am in the middle of helping a client lift a physical Power System out of the computer room and onto a cloud IBM i partition. Same workloads. Same legacy ERP system (RPG, CL and AS400 style physical files) that have paid the bills for years. The transition should be seamless to the end users. …
Firstly, ‘Sorry for writing so many blogs about IBM BOB‘ in recent months, but it really has been a complete game changer for me over the last year. It has turned the daily grind of staring at dusty fixed-format RPG into something almost enjoyable (honestly!). What used to take hours of head-scratching and strong tea …
IBM i ACS 1.1.9.14 is now available – a security-focused update you should apply promptly. IBM released ACS 1.1.9.14 on 5 August 2026 (build 6320), and this is primarily a security-focused update, not a feature release. This might not look like an exciting feature-packed release, but it is important. Even though there are no new …
From AS/400 Fossils to Modern IBM i SQL: The Practical Path That Doesn’t Break Everything I’ve just knocked out a short series of practical lessons on dragging classic AS/400 databases into the 21st century with proper IBM i SQL [more] We’re taking those ancient DDS Physical Files and Logical Files and turning them into grown-up …
There is a special breed of IBM i programmer who will fight you to the death over the name of the box. Call it an IBM i Power system and watch their blood pressure climb. Mention Power Systems running IBM i and they start twitching. No, they insist, it is still an AS/400, always has …
I still get mildly shocked, in a mild English “I need a strong cup of tea” kind of way, by how many IBM i shops I walk into (or remote into) where the security officer password is still the factory default. Yes. QSECOFR / QSECOFR. On production systems. In 2026. And that’s before we even …
As I like to tell IBM i clients: the goal isn’t to get rid of the AS/400 database. It’s to discover that you’ve actually been running one of the world’s best SQL databases all along. The Advantages of Modernizing an Old AS/400 Database to Modern SQL If you are still rocking physical files defined in …
IBM i BOB v2.0 was released June 24, 2026 – just one day before my birthday! Coincidence? I don’t think so 😉 IBM BOB TWO is a major rebuild of IBM’s AI-powered development partner. It focuses on speed, agentic capabilities, and better enterprise workflows, with a dedicated Premium Package for i that brings IBM i-specific …
I was just happily working away and VSCODE (and IBM BOB) popped up this message: “YIKES!!!” I thought. Yes. I do still think in 100 year old English language style… By Jove! But don’t worry, a quick search and I found this to ease my fears: So, simply uninstall the Source Orbit Extension and get …
IBM i, Programming, RPG, SQL
If you have ever written a tidy little subprocedure that does some embedded SQL, then checked SQLCODE afterwards only to find it stubbornly sitting at zero even though the statement clearly failed, you have probably met this gotcha. Today we are going to answer three questions that trip up plenty of IBM i developers: Spoiler: …
