• Guru: Parsing JSON That Has Spaces In The Key

  July 8, 2024 Mike Larsen

  One of my favorite tasks is working with APIs. I’ve worked with many APIs over the years, and some introduce unique challenges that must be overcome. Recently, I worked on a project where I was to consume a REST API that provided a JSON payload. While that seems straight forward, I quickly discovered a challenge.

  The JSON payload had keys that have spaces in them (Figure 1). That may be considered bad practice, but I still needed to figure out how I could parse it correctly. Having never seen JSON like this before, I started with a Google search. I …

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• Xorux Is Gaining Traction With LPAR2RRD System Monitoring

  July 8, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  System monitoring and management is a lot more complicated these days than it was back in the early days of the AS/400 or even the middle years of the iSeries. To start, there are physical and virtual servers, physical and virtual storage, and physical and virtual networking to deal with, and finding a tool – or a set of integrated tools – that can do that, and do it across disparate and incompatible platforms, is a big ask.

  But a little known software company called Xorux, which is based in Prague in the Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, actually …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Numbers 24 And 25

  July 8, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  It is Ketchup Week here at the IBM i PTF Guide, and not just because of all of the hot dogs, hamburgers, and French American fries being consumed for the Independence Day holiday here in the United States of America.

  The Four Hundred has been publishing on a lighter schedule than usual, as sometimes happens during the summer months as people get some downtime, and we are catching you up on the PTFs for the IBM i stack, converging two issues of The Guide into a single one so we can get back to lock stepping it in Monday’s …

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• Celerity Buys Chilli IT To Expand Its Power Systems Business

  June 24, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Like so many companies that have been part of the AS/400 ecosystem, both Celerity and Chilli IT are relatively small firms with long histories in peddling Power-based systems from IBM and who expanded into providing managed services over the years. Celerity and Chilli IT are also similar in another way in that both are based in the United Kingdom and largely serve customers in the British Isles.

  Now, they are one company in the wake of a partnership that the two companies formed back in February that turned into an outright acquisition a few weeks ago, with Celerity buying Chilli …

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• Profound Brings GenAI Tech To IBM i Apps with Profound AI

  June 24, 2024 Alex Woodie

  For more than 20 years, Profound Logic has been at the cutting edge of bringing the latest Web, mobile, and API technology to IBM i shops. With the launch of Profound AI, it’s now helping IBM i shops adopt the latest in user interface tech: natural language and generative AI.

  GenAI has taken the world by storm since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. Since then, nearly every large enterprise has explored the potential for using large language models (LLMs) to develop a range of GenAI products, including chatbots, autonomous agents, question-and-answering systems, and knowledge management apps.

  Despite the potential …

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• Guru: Growing A More Productive Team With Procedure Driven RPG

  June 24, 2024 Gregory Simmons

  There are many great benefits to procedure driven RPG, and I have covered many of them in my previous articles. In this article, I want to share with you what I believe is the biggest benefit to implementing procedure driven RPG in your shop; procedures, when written and implemented properly, are reusable.

  When you’ve written a new procedure that expertly tackles one task, you should be proud of the accomplishment. But don’t keep that in your program. Export it in a service program for your whole team to use! Now, undoubtedly, you will find yourself at one point thinking: “Yeah, …

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• The 13,152 Days Of The AS/400 Platform, And Counting

  June 24, 2024 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  In the computer market, whether it is for laptops or datacenter iron, it is hard to say if longevity is gauged in human years or dog and cat years or something else like maybe historical or geological time.

  In some ways, 36 years old, which is what has just happened to the AS/400 platform a few days ago, is a long time to do anything, and in others, 36 years is just the beginning of a process. As we have pointed out when celebrating the AS/400’s birthday in prior years, the origins of the platform reach back to 1978 when …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 26, Number 23

  June 24, 2024 Doug Bidwell

  This week, there is only one security vulnerability in the IBM i stack, but there are a slew of PTF updates for the currently supported releases of the IBM i operating system.

  So to start with, there is Security Bulletin: IBM Rational Developer for i is vulnerable to leaked credentials due to a flaw in follow-redirects (CVE-2024-28849), which you can find out more about at this link. The issue affects IBM Rational Developer for i 9.8.0.0 through 9.8.0.1, and the issue can be fixed by installing fixpack 9.8.0.2.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release …

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• IBM Banking on Merlin 2.0 to Goose Modern Development on IBM i

  June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie

  IBM last week shipped most of the new stuff unveiled in the Spring Technology Refreshes, which includes Merlin 2.0, the Web-based application development and modernization environment for IBM i. Big Blue is betting that the new and improved offering will encourage IBM i shops to (finally) begin their journey toward truly modern coding techniques.

  Friday, June 14 marked the start of general availability for the majority of the features IBM is including in IBM i 7.5 TR4 and IBM i 7.4 TR10, which it announced on May 8. The version 2.0 release of Merlin – whose official IBM name …

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• MDNA Launches Unit Testing Tool for IBM i

  June 19, 2024 Alex Woodie

  Midrange Dynamics North America (MDNA) recently launched a new unit testing tool that’s designed to make it easier for IBM i developers to test their code. The software, called MDTest, is works with RDi and VS Code and integrates with MDNA’s change management software for IBM i.

  MDNA created MDTest to provide for a simple way for developers to unit test their ILE code. The software automates the process of executing test scripts, recording results, and determining whether the software can be pushed into the next stage of the DevOps processes.

  The product includes about 30 pre-built software quality tests …

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