Author Archive for: Alan Seiden

Entries by Alan Seiden

PHP 8.6 is Coming Soon to IBM i

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Scheduled for late 2026, PHP 8.6 is expected to bring numerous improvements, especially in diagnostics, security, and performance. Here are several PHP 8.6 highlights that I see as helpful for IBM i users and a note about PHP 8.2 going end-of-life. Seiden Group’s Contribution to PHP 8.6 One of the proposed PHP 8.6 enhancements came from our own team. Calvin Buckley of Seiden Group wrote the RFC to display function arguments in PHP error messages: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/display_error_function_args This improvement is designed to make debugging easier by showing more information when a built-in function fails. For example, instead of seeing only that…

Safer npm installation is on the way for Node.js (and all JavaScript)

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JavaScript’s package manager, npm, has been in the news lately for allowing supply-chain risks. By default, npm trusts a module’s install scripts, running them automatically. In a recent compromise of Red Hat npm packages, attackers used malicious install scripts to spread a credential-stealing worm. Some packages do need to run installation scripts. The odbc module, for example, uses node-gyp during installation to compile the driver. On IBM i and other platforms, that compile step may be necessary. npm’s response Starting with npm 11.16.0, npm will warn about install scripts that have not been explicitly approved. In npm 12, unapproved scripts…

IBM i: A Natural Platform for Agentic AI

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At the April 2026 COMMON PowerUp conference in New Orleans, IBM’s Adam Shedivy presented a compelling vision of IBM i as an “agentic-native” operating system. Adam observed that IBM i’s integrated architecture provides what agentic AI needs: business data, operations, security, authority, and auditability. Let’s see what makes IBM i an agentic-native platform. Integration is the key While useful for humans, the integrated nature of the IBM i platform becomes even more potent for agentic AI. Here, the operating system, Db2 database, object model, user profiles, job management, command environment, security model, audit journals, and system services are part of…

Your “AS/400” Is a Modern IBM i Platform

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During a recent client visit, a executive told me that his company was still running an AS/400. His employees had criticized the system as outdated and risky. He defended it because it was stable and reliable, but he also seemed to accept the idea that it was old. I explained that while the company may once have had an AS/400, today they were running IBM i on Power hardware. They were using it like an old system, but it is modern technology, capable of much more. The executive was pleased and wanted to learn more. Backward-compatible and future-powered IBM i’s…

MCP + AI for IBM i Teams (with a MongoDB example)

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The Model Context Protocol (MCP) standard defines how AI tools connect to systems such as databases, services, and internal utilities. Instead of every AI product inventing its own custom connector, MCP provides a standard interface. A good example comes from Seiden Group’s Jack Woehr in his article A Simple MongoDB MCP Server Agent. Jack was also just named MongoDB Creator of the Month. (MongoDb is a flexible NoSQL database that can manage large amounts of unstructured or semi-structured data.) If you’re attending conferences this year, Jack will be talking about AI at NEUGC (April 7–9, 2026) and at COMMON POWERUp…

Seiden PHP+ Delivers PHP 8.5 to IBM i

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Each year brings a new PHP release. We’ve prepared Seiden PHP+ so that IBM i users can adopt PHP 8.5 shortly after it becomes generally available (GA) around November 20, 2025. As I mentioned in Keep Your PHP Secure: Why Regular Updates Matter, PHP users should adopt a regular upgrade schedule to make upgrades easier. November 20, 2025 UPDATE PHP 8.5 and Seiden PHP+ 8.5 are both available as of today. Notable Enhancements in PHP 8.5 Two updates stand out to me:

Keep Your PHP Secure: Why Regular Updates Matter

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Cybersecurity best practices require regular security assessments, including for PHP. We recommend installing PHP patch releases at least quarterly. You can review all regular PHP updates, including CVE security fixes, on the php.net changelog page. Our Seiden PHP+ changelog provides additional updates that we include in our supported Seiden PHP+ package.

What the Shai-Hulud npm Worm Means for Node.js Developers

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The Node.js ecosystem has been disrupted by self-replicating malware called Shai-Hulud. In September 2025, researchers found that Shai-Hulud had infected more than 500 npm packages, including some from trusted maintainers. The worm did not just publish a few bad versions. It spread automatically, using stolen credentials to infect other packages owned by the same developer.

Ransomware Lessons from Brussels Airport and IBM i

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At Brussels Airport recently, I noticed airline staff working from paper passenger lists because their digital systems were unavailable. The EU Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA) later confirmed the disruption was caused by a ransomware attack on a third-party airline system (Reuters report).