Author Archive for: Alan Seiden

Entries by Alan Seiden

Critical php2shell Security Update Available in Seiden PHP+ Server

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Last updated: 11:38pm ET, Oct. 21, 2026: A security update for CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619 (known as php2shell) is now available in Seiden PHP+ Server for IBM i. All supported PHP versions, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, and 8.5, plus end-of-life 7.4, 8.0, and 8.1, have the update available. We encourage everyone to apply it promptly. The update addresses two critical PHP vulnerabilities, each rated 9.2 out of 10 under the CVSS v4.0 scoring system. The PHP security team announced the planned release on October 20 and urged users to upgrade as soon as it became available. Preparing for these inevitable rapid fixes…

Moving to IBM i 7.6? An SDA Alternative with VS Code and IBM Bob

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Have you been holding off on IBM i 7.6 because your developers need Screen Design Aid (SDA)? IBM removed SDA in 7.6, but there is another way to maintain your DDS display files. Christian Larsen’s free and open source Display File DDS Edit extension lets you visually edit and preview display files in VS Code and IBM Bob. For shops that depend on SDA, the extension can remove an obstacle to upgrading. Christian joined us at our September 25, 2026, Code for i Fridays meeting to demonstrate the editor and answer questions. We have posted the video of Christian’s demonstration,…

What’s New with Mapepire Database Connector for IBM i

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Since its release by IBM two years ago, the open-source Db2 for IBM i connector known as Mapepire has become a trusted part of our ecosystem.  In 2025, we wrote about Seiden Group professional support for Mapepire and answered common questions. Since then, the project has continued to advance and prove itself. Here’s what’s new. Recent Mapepire news and updates IBM chose Mapepire to support its strategic AI agent-enabling software, the IBM i MCP Server The Code for i project has adopted Mapepire for running Db2 queries Enhancements continue with features such as Read-Only Mode Seiden Group experience on projects…

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: