Use Those IBM i Service Vouchers — Program Ends In 2025

One of the best deals in IBM i services is about to end. Effective January 1, 2025, the “IBM i Service Voucher for Power” program is being withdrawn. The program has long provided Power hardware customers with vouchers for Expert Labs consulting. (Expert Labs was formerly known as Lab Services.)

Many companies are not even aware that they are entitled to vouchers.

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PHP: The “RPG” of Open Source for IBM i

Reliable. Versatile. Fast. The terms we use to describe modern RPG applications apply to PHP as well. That’s why PHP remains a top choice to supplement RPG for IBM i projects involving the web, APIs, and high-volume transactions.

One sterling example is Curbstone’s PCI-validated payment solution, which uses PHP-based portals to process over 8 billion dollars in credit card payments annually with 99.99% uptime availability.

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Compare Source Code with VS Code for IBM i

Code for i’s source comparison feature recently helped me find a bug. While comparing old vs. new versions of an RPG program, I discovered that a CHAIN had been changed to an SQL SELECT, which was fine, except that an important column name had been forgotten. I created a “before and after” Code for i screen shot for the programmer, who then fixed the mistake.

As documented on the Code for i “Tricks” page, comparing source code takes only two steps. This technique works both for traditional source members and stream files stored in the IFS.

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How Current Are Your PTF Groups? Find Out Using SQL

IBM i continues to deliver SQL interfaces to simplify our work and keep our technology current.

Example: We recently needed to test an issue with Apache HTTP Server for i for a support client. IBM Support requested that we check for the latest HTTP PTF Group on our server. (PTF Groups are the names given to logically related fixes, such as those related to HTTP.) To find out if we had the most current group, we used the  SYSTOOLS.GROUP_PTF_CURRENCY SQL view. 

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“BOB” for IBM i: Demonstration by Edmund Reinhardt

At Seiden Group’s September 13, 2024, Code for i Fridays meeting, IBM’s Edmund Reinhardt presented a one-hour tutorial on the Better Object Builder (BOB).

This comprehensive demo was given by request. A regular attendee had asked for a complete demonstration, start to finish, of how to use BOB to compile source in VS Code; prepare a make file from scratch; and to use Source Orbit. These tools can help developers who wish to use Git with stream files instead of traditional QSYS-based source members.

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Carol Woodbury’s Security Advice from CIO Summit at OCEAN 2024

Carol Woodbury

Carol Woodbury

I had the privilege of hosting security expert Carol Woodbury as she led a roundtable discussion at this past summer’s OCEAN TechCon. Carol is IBM i Security SME and Senior Advisor with our friends at Kisco Systems.

Carol’s observations made a strong impression on both me and our CIO guests. Here are just a few.

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PHP on IBM i Rebuild Announcement

On August 12, 2024, we pushed a major update to Seiden PHP+, in versions from 7.3 to 8.3, to accommodate IBM updates to OpenSSL. If you receive warnings in your PHP error log resembling: Module "PDO" is already loaded in Unknown on line 0, follow the steps in this article.

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What’s New & Exciting in PHP on IBM i in 2024

A proven IBM i solution for API, mobile, and web application development, PHP is now at version 8.3. Solid and dependable, today’s PHP is fast, easy to code, yet powerful for the modern developer.

In the video below, courtesy of Toronto User Group (TUG), Alan Seiden explores modern uses for PHP. He provides tips and code samples, discusses recent PHP enhancements, and offers his recommendations for security and performance. You’ll also learn how:

  • IBM i users enjoy easy updates and fast performance.
  • The PHP package comes with key extensions, tested and working out of the box.
  • Each new PHP release is faster, more powerful, and encourages better development practices, to reduce technical debt.

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Call/Parm Your Open Source Apps from RPG and CL with QSHCALL

QSHONI integration for IBM i RPG, CL and open sourceA few years back I created the QShell on IBM i (QshOni) project to allow QShell/PASE (open source) apps to be more easily integrated and used with traditional IBM i job streams written in RPG and CL. Since then, many developers have adopted QshOni to utilize their open source apps in conjunction with their classic traditional apps.

Recently I added several new commands to QshOni to make living the PASE life even easier for RPG developers. Today’s focus will be on the QSHCALL command.

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