Now that speedy PHP 7 is available for IBM i, we’ve been helping clients upgrade to this long-awaited release. Here are some resources for performing this popular upgrade. First, we recommend Rod Flohr’s article Migrate to Zend Server 9 from Previous Versions, which contains both basic instructions and special tips.
Seiden Group colleague Josh Hall and I will attend Laracon, the Laravel conference, in NYC on July 25-26, 2017. Getting these coveted tickets required persistence — they sold out quickly! Laravel is a hot PHP framework with a loyal community. We’ve been building our Laravel practice and look forward to sharing the latest tips and techniques with our clients. According to creator Taylor Otwell, the first commercial installation of Laravel was on an IBM i system!
PHP 7 is creating excitement among PHP aficionados for its speed and additional language techniques. As the official runtime for enterprise PHP, Zend Server has always offered a free basic edition to IBM i customers. Recently, a change occurred on the Zend Server download page that has caused some confusion. At the time of this writing, the Zend Server download was labeled as a “30-day trial” even though, as an IBM i customer, you are still entitled to a free basic edition license. Of course, you can also opt for paid editions. IBM i users can request a download of Zend Server for IBM…
It’s not always easy to locate the official documentation for all features of DB2 for IBM i. Using Google Search is hit or miss, with full-text searches often bringing irrelevant results from other varieties of DB2 or from older versions. Many people don’t know that complete reference manuals are available for almost every aspect of DB2 on i.
July 20-22, 2017, Costa Mesa, CA I always look forward to participating in the OCEAN Tech conference. It’s an impressive example of a local user group bringing affordable education to its members.
With another new IBM i Technology Refresh upon us, here’s a quick reminder how to find your server’s current TR level. It’s getting easier and easier to do. An IBM i Service using DB2 and SQL provides the TR level more cleanly than older approaches. I love that we can use the universal SQL to expose the innards of our beloved system!
CIO-level view at the CIO Summit in Manhattan Most people know Seiden Group as PHP specialists who help IBM i teams develop and tune PHP applications running on IBM i. But we also work with CIOs to help them solve the unique challenges they face. We’ve found that for many IBM i CIOs, it’s lonely at the top. CIOs would love to have a community of peers who fully understood the nature of the decisions they must make. Whereas developers can discuss technical issues with team members or through online forums, CIOs often lack such support and sharing because of…
The Seiden Group team is headed to Orlando May 6-10 to participate in COMMON 2017. In addition to teaching sessions and workshops on best practices for using PHP and other open source technologies on IBM i, we’re looking forward to meeting up with our clients and friends. One of our favorite opportunities at COMMON is to meet professionals at all levels of the IT organization. Understanding the challenges faced by each member of the IT team — from admin to CIO — strengthens our ability to build effective solutions that are easy to use, easy to extend, easy to maintain.
In just two weeks I’ll have the pleasure of joining some of the top IBM i development experts in Orlando for the RPG & DB2 Summit. Run by Susan Gantner, Jon Paris and Paul Tuohy, this conference is full of big personalities who create a warm, friendly environment that’s perfect for learning. I enjoy the community feeling and how excited everyone is to solve development problems and share tips and techniques. The RPG & DB2 Summit is one of the few training events that focuses exclusively on topics of interest to IBM i developers. That includes PHP and SQL, of…
Every year I look forward to WMPCA’s Spring Technical Conference. And it’s not just because this active IBM i user group does a great job of bringing experts to beautiful Wisconsin (in March!) to teach a broad range of IBM i topics. I also love meeting the next generation of IBM i talent, always represented by Jim Buck’s RPG students at Gateway Technical College. And, of course, there are many PHP and open source sessions to choose from, including these from me: Make Your IBM i Sizzle with WordPress Apache Web Server Magic on IBM i Using DB2 and SQL…
