Seiden Group Blog - Page 9 of 30

How to Update the Code for i Extension

July 5, 2023/0 Comments/in VS Code for i /by Alan Seiden

Code for IBM i has been moving quickly. As the popularity of this Visual Studio Code extension has grown, updates and enhancements have arrived regularly.

If you encounter a bug or issue, installing the latest update may resolve it. Updating Code for i requires only a restart of VS Code. Here are some details to clarify how to restart as well as how to roll back the update, if desired.

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PHP 8.3 Coming to IBM i This Year

June 23, 2023/0 Comments/in PHP /by Alan Seiden

I had to chuckle when someone at a recent conference seemed surprised that PHP was still a vital force in web and API development. He hadn’t heard much about PHP lately at conferences.

My explanation: “It’s reliable and the major problems have been solved.”

I continued: “There’s a significant PHP update each year, plus monthly fixes. It’s evolving steadily, with attention to backward compatibility, all changes discussed in the open, easy to manage, no surprises.”

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Common Europe Congress 2023 in Prague

June 19, 2023/2 Comments/in IBM i, News & Events /by Jack Woehr

IBM Champions Jack Woehr, Niels Liisberg, and Alan Seiden mug for the camera

The Common Europe Congress 2023 in Prague hosted around 400 international attendees steeped in IBM Power Systems from 11 June to 14 June.

This was my first visit to a Common Europe event, and I was greatly impressed. The organization was tight, the venue world-class, and the level of enthusiasm among the participants high. The sessions were interesting and useful.

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Running the x86 IBM i ODBC driver on ARM Linux with Rosetta

May 30, 2023/0 Comments/in ODBC, Open Source /by Calvin Buckley

I recently did some research on how to run the IBM i ODBC driver under Linux on newer macOS architecture and thought I’d share what I learned.

Over the last few years, macOS has changed from x86 (Intel) to ARM architecture. IBM has kept pace by updating its IBM i ODBC driver to support ARM on macOS as of version 1.1.0.15.

Developers who use a Linux virtual machine, however, will note that there is no ARM version of the Linux driver available yet. While an ARM-native version of the driver would be ideal, Mac users running a Linux virtual machine can run the existing x86 version of the driver using Rosetta for Linux. Read more →

Basic Authentication Credentials are Encrypted with TLS

April 20, 2023/0 Comments/in APIs & Web Services /by Calvin Buckley

You may have heard claims that HTTP “basic” authentication (classic user/password popup prompt or via an API call) leaves credentials unencrypted and exposed. While it’s true that basic auth itself doesn’t encrypt credentials, this doesn’t matter in practice.

Modern sites and APIs should be using HTTPS, which encrypts everything over the wire, protecting basic authentication credentials in transit. This article will explain why that’s the case.

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What’s New in Open Source on IBM i

April 20, 2023/0 Comments/in IBM i, Open Source /by Amy Lantz

Open source on IBM i is moving fast these days. Alan recently shared his favorite updates to IBM i open source—focusing on improved security, performance, and ease of programming—at a Summit Lunch & Learn hosted by Paul Tuohy.

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curl Your RPG Apps with QSHCURL

April 18, 2023/2 Comments/in APIs & Web Services, Open Source, Web development /by Richard Schoen

In this post we’ll take a closer look at how IBM i developers can use the QSHCURL command to easily reach out from CL or RPG and talk to internet-based services and APIs, then consume the resulting data, without a lot of extra effort.

First we’ll provide a short curl intro, and then we’ll look at an example of how to use the PASE-based curl command with an RPG program.

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Integrate Python, Node, PHP, etc. with CL & RPG on IBM i – 2023 Update

March 10, 2023/0 Comments/in IBM i, Node.js, PHP, Python /by Richard Schoen

A few years ago I introduced you to my QShell on i utility – QSHONI. QSHONI makes it easy for traditional CL, RPG, and COBOL programs to call Python utilities and other QShell/PASE utility programs (PHP, Node, Java, etc.) and directly use their output. QSHONI opened up a whole new world of integrations to open source apps from RPG, CL, and COBOL.

In this post I will update you on new features that have been added to the QSHONI utilities over the past 12 months.

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Debug RPGLE and COBOL with VS Code for IBM i

March 7, 2023/18 Comments/in RPG, VS Code for i /by Amy Lantz

Updated July 14, 2025

Our Twitter feeds recently rang out with this long-awaited news from Liam Allan:

“Debugging ILE COBOL and RPGLE inside @code like it’s any other day! I’m pumped for this release #ibmi.”

As reported by Alex Woodie in IBM i Debugger Comes to VS Code, IBM decoupled their RPG/COBOL debugger from RDi after years of encouragement from Liam. It’s now available as a Debug Service to the thousands of IBM i developers who have downloaded Visual Studio Code for IBM i. Read more →

IBM i Apache Security Fixes for PCI Compliance

February 2, 2023/0 Comments/in Apache, IBM i /by Alan Seiden

Apache HTTP Server Project A few months after we published the article Apache for IBM i: Where to Find Documentation, astute reader Paul Nicolay of Cegeka shared yet another hard-to-find Apache resource with us.

Paul recommends IBM Support’s IBM HTTP Server for i PCI Compliance page for organizations following the stringent PCI DSS security standard for accepting card payments. In addition to confirming that Apache on IBM i is a PCI-compliant web server, the page lists the IBM i PTFs required to fix known vulnerabilities.

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