• IBM’s Bob AI Assistant Can Now Live In Your Datacenter

  October 5, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Bob, the AI assistant developed by Big Blue for IBM i and other environments, is now available for deployment on-prem, IBM announced last week. The news is a boon for enterprises, government agencies, and other organizations that can’t risk sending sensitive data off site.

  IBM announced Bob about a year ago to help with application development tasks, including understanding, explaining, generating, refactoring, transforming, and testing code. When Bob 1.0 launched in April, Bob supported IBM i-specific languages like RPG, CL, and DDS, as well as SQL and COBOL. However, it lacked a native connection to IBM i code residing …

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• Start Where the Data Lives: Best Practices for Taking IBM i Into AI

  October 5, 2026 Doug McMaster Ron Venzin and Gregg Rohaly

  The AI conversation has arrived at the IBM i shop, and in most cases, it did not come in through the computer room door. It came down from the boardroom, or over from finance, or sideways from a sales vice president who watched a demo at a conference and wants to know why the company cannot ask its own order history a question in plain English. The IBM i manager is then handed a question that sounds technical but is strategic: can our core platform play in this, or do we need to replace it to get there?

  That is …

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• Guru: A Modernization Experiment Using IBM Bob 2.0

  October 5, 2026 Dan Darnell and Eric Whitcomb

  The most common use case for business applications is the CRUD model. The Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations, performed against a business database, are found almost everywhere. Behind every fancy inquiry dashboard with all the graphical bling you can muster are a slew of tried and true so-called “maintenance programs” doing the heavy lifting over the data being presented. Whether it is back-office parameter tables, customer maintenance, or order entry applications, the CRUD model is fundamental. Most of us can whip out a simple green-screen maintenance program with our eyes closed in, oh, a couple hours or so, depending …

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• How Are IBM i Shops Using AI? Fortra and COMMON Want to Know

  October 5, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Artificial intelligence is taking the world by storm, changing how we do things in fundamental ways. It’s automating complex tasks, accelerating scientific breakthroughs, and shifting how people work. It’s also changing how we interact with the IBM i server, which is the focus of a new survey you can take now from Fortra and COMMON.

  Fortra is no stranger to surveys on IBM i, as we see with the IBM i Marketplace Survey. The company ran its first IBM i Marketplace Survey in the fall of 2014 for release in early 2015, back when it was still known as HelpSystems. …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 28, Number 34

  October 5, 2026 Doug Bidwell

  This week, you have a bunch of things to look at and ponder, as well as patches to Rational Developer for i and a bunch of security bulletins.

  First, there is a Virtual Ethernet Connectivity Advisory for IBM i 7.6 TR2 and IBM i 7.5 TR8. IBM is investigating a network connectivity issue that can affect IBM i 7.6 TR2 and 7.5 TR8 systems using Virtual Ethernet adapter type 268C. Read this link for further details and do so before putting on the latest cume and groups.

  And in the whoops column, there is also a note that Security PTF …

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• It Is Time Once Again To Take The IBM i Marketplace Survey

  October 5, 2026 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  The time has come to take the annual IBM i Marketplace Survey from Fortra, and we are asking you to spend a few precious moments and give us all some insight into what is going on inside of your IT organization.

  The annual survey, which is in its 13^th year, opened up on September 15. You can give back to the IBM i community and help nudge IBM and ISVs in directions that are helpful to you by taking the survey, which you can do at this link.

  The results of this survey are an invaluable resource for …

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• PHP’s Evolution On The IBM i Platform Continues

  September 28, 2026 Alex Woodie

  PHP was one of the first open source languages and runtimes to come to IBM i way back in the early 2000s. More than two decades later, open source is thriving on IBM i with hundreds of projects, while PHP is considered a hardened, enterprise-grade language for modern Web applications. This fall will see at least one new release of PHP coming to IBM i, version 8.6, and perhaps more.

  We are all indebted to the early backers of PHP on the IBM i platform, who saw the potential for the open-source project to evolve into the sturdy business language …

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• Protecting IBM i Data For The AI Revolution

  September 28, 2026 Richard Dolewski

  AI is a prime-time conversation in every walk of life. No longer just a buzzword. AI is changing the Enterprise Security model, so I ask, “Are you ready for this next IT transformation?” Organizations everywhere are accelerating artificial intelligence initiatives at a rapid pace and scale.

  Most conversations focus on what AI can do for business today and how fast it will be deployed. AI drives automated workflows, autonomous efficiencies, supply chain improvements, faster time to market, and productivity. True modernization comes from constantly reviewing how things are done, embracing new tools, protocols, and working practices to improve …

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• Guru: Two More Small But Handy RPG Enhancements: LIKE(*EXT) And %LOOKUPNE

  September 28, 2026 Gregory Simmons

  Not every trip into the field calls for hauling the whole pack, and not every search calls for scanning everything by hand. Two of the smaller enhancements in this batch of July PTFs for IBM i 7.5 and 7.6 are exactly that kind of quiet convenience: tools that let you reach for just the piece you actually need instead of doing more work than the job requires.

  DISCLAIMER: The mushroom names and file/field names used in the examples below are purely to give the sample programs some context and make them more interesting. Before foraging for or consuming any wild …

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• IBM i Integration Gives Costco Shoppers Real-Time Inventory

  September 28, 2026 Alex Woodie

  Here’s the scene: Janet is perusing the computer aisles at Costco when suddenly she sees it: The exact configuration of a MacBook Pro she’s been looking for, at a really good price. As she’s getting ready to buy it, Janet makes a grim discovery: Costco is out of that particular MacBook Pro, and the item on display is the last one in the store.

  Janet isn’t the first customer to be disappointed in this way. Retailers have long struggled to adequately reflect the actual warehouse product inventory with the items on display in the front of the store. Communicating out-of-stock …

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