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IBM

IBM Finally Announces IBM I Version 7.5 (itjungle.com) 39

Posted by EditorDavid from the saying-i dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader slack_justyb writes: IBM announces IBM i (some you of you may know it under the old name of AS/400) 7.5 the first new release in three years since the 7.4 release. One of the big headlines with the IBM i 7.5 announcement is Merlin which stands for the Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration....

With the Db2 product, IBM i is now receiving Boolean data types with support for this new type in RPG and JSON environments. Larger Indexes, the previous limit was 1.6TB indexes, that has now been increased to 16TB. And Db2 is now fully compliant with SQL:2016 the most recent publication of the SQL standard, beating Oracle to the punch on full support of the standard. And finally, QSYS2-based functions for using HTTP requests to publish or consume Web services, including the use of embedded SQL in REST services. These are enhanced versions of the functions that were seen in 7.3/7.4 where IBM removed the requirement for a JVM to use SQL to consume web services.
IT Jungle has many more details. Some of the highlights: Merlin provides a lightweight, browser-based development environment for creating new applications or modernizing existing RPG-based application. It's an alternative to Rational Developer for i (RDi) based on Eclipse, which many developers seem to hate. Developed in partnership with ARCAD Software, Merlin comes pre-loaded with tools like Git and Jenkins for DevOps-style code management, as well as an RPG code-converter. It runs in a Linux-based Red Hat OpenShift container running on the Power platform. While it's not technically tied to IBM i version 7.5 or 7.4 TR6, Merlin represents an important change in how IBM is packaging and delivering capabilities for IBM i shops, as well as a recognition that IBM should take a more active role in helping users modernize their codebases....

IBM is now enabling customers to buy subscriptions to IBM i for periods of one to five years. Allowing customers to use operating expenditure (Opex) budget lines instead of the dreaded capital expenditure (CapEx) accounting code for subscriptions. IBM is focusing on lower-end IBM i environments at the moment, so the subscription is limited to four-core P05 machines at this time. As part of this shift to software subscriptions, IBM is rethinking how it bundles ancillary products that are often used with IBM i. 11 packages are being moved into the core OS entitlement.
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IBM Finally Announces IBM I Version 7.5 More

IBM Finally Announces IBM I Version 7.5

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  • RPG? (Score:5, Funny)

    by anonymouscoward52236 ( 6163996 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @03:48PM (#62512316)

    RPG? What's that? Role playing games? Lol. Just kidding. I had to program that. Whoops, I may have just doxxed myself, there's only a few dozen of us, lol!

  • With the Db2 product, IBM i is now receiving Boolean data types with support for this new type in RPG...

    There wasn't a boolean type before now? In 2022?
    Also, what the fuck are you supposed to use booleans for in a role-playing game?

  • Merlin which stands for the Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration....

    No R. Even an exceptionally creative marketdroid can't conjure up "Merlin" out of those words. But nice try.

    • The "R" in "for".

    • No R. Even an exceptionally creative marketdroid can't conjure up "Merlin" out of those words.

      In this case, I'll lay money on the culprit being an engineer or other tech-type person. Marketing people do play fast and loose with the facts, but they typically are good at identifying problems that might lead to mockery (like this one).

      I still remember when a UW CSE faculty member was trying to come up with a memorable acronym for their RFID-related project. They decided the acronym would be "RFIDder", but that somehow people should pronounce that as "fritter" [theguardian.com]. Unsurprisingly, that didn't last long.

    • Re:Melin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @04:23PM (#62512386)

      Modernization Engine foR Lifecyle INtegration. Perhaps not as ingenious as "Get Rid Of Slimy girlS", but it'll do.

    • Merlin which stands for the Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration....

      No R. Even an exceptionally creative marketdroid can't conjure up "Merlin" out of those words.

      ModeRnization. Which has a superficially similar beginning to Merlin. It's a perfectly cromulent reduction.

      If I were a better liar I would have made a great marketer.

    • I wouldn't trust Melin. That would be like buying a Sorny or Magnetbox and putting my faith in it to not burn down my house in the middle of the night.

  • A Small Taste of RPG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crunchy_one ( 1047426 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @04:51PM (#62512444)
    H* Hello world in RPG IV versions 3 and 4

    D msg S 32 inz(*blank)

    D wait S 1

    C eval msg = 'Hello World'

    C msg dsply wait

    C eval *inlr = *on

    • Re:A Small Taste of RPG (Score:4, Interesting)

      by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Sunday May 08, 2022 @12:46AM (#62513228)

      Okay, but in fairness. Seeing full fixed format with cycle main is really rare. V5R1 introduced /free and by 2004 with V5R3 and the whole rebranding to i5/OS, seeing fully fixed is either RPGIII or something that really overlooked.

      More modern RPGLE uses ILE linear main with the fully free format. So the above could be rewritten.

      **FREE
      ctl-opt main(PGMNAME);

      dcl-proc PGMNAME;
      dcl-pi *n extpgm end-pi;

      dcl-s msg char(32) inz(*blanks);
      dcl-s wait char(1);
      msg = 'Hello World';
      dsply msg wait;
      return;

      end-proc;

      But you don't need a variable for msg, you can also send literals now too

      **FREE
      ctl-opt main(PGMNAME);

      dcl-proc PGMNAME;
      dcl-pi *n extpgm end-pi;

      dcl-s wait char(1);
      dsply 'Hello World' wait;
      return;

      end-proc;

      But finally, with as simple a program as writing "Hello World" you can just compile the thing with cycle main and remove all the boiler plate.

      **FREE
      dcl-s wait char(1);
      dsply 'Hello World' wait;

      This will give you the cycle main logic so you're final binary will be larger, but runtime will be roughly the same as linear main.

      But "Hello World" is such a bad example for RPGLE because it's really a domain specific (-ish) programming language. It does an incredible job for that task that it is tasked to do. Move data around. Yes, there's the old printer files for reports and what-not, but that's mostly backwards compatibility at this point. RPGLE main job is moving data and it does that task quite well. Additionally the language has really evolved, XML and JSON files can be digested or built with the:

      data-into
      xml-into
      data-gen

      opcodes. And that data can be easily moved around. A lot of web service to database stuff we do, basically is a small couple line proc in RPG, that receives an SQLTYPE(CLOB:1K) and converts it into data structures that we then pass into an "exec sql" statement.

      RPGLE produces service programs that can eat these JSONs and have them committed to the backend as fast as the IIS server that acts as the front-end can create them, and even at the hardest hit times of the day, the IBM i service programs are barely sweating.

      Yeah the downside is IBM's lock in, but gosh have they really made the RPG compiler incredibly good at taking a few lines of code and converting it into programs that can digest large sums of data very quickly. I've done C# into MS-SQL and I'm not going to knock it, it works really well. But IBM has really made RPGLE a more modern language that can take even fewer lines than the C# program and produce something much faster than the C# program. BUT again the cost is, you being locked to IBM.

  • I thought Big Blue stopped making it and moved on to z/OS. Shows what I know.

    • Re:IBM still puts out i? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Saturday May 07, 2022 @05:20PM (#62512520)

      i runs on IBM Power, while z/OS is for the Z-series mainframe CPUs. You can always run AIX or Red Hat instead of IBM i if one feels like it.

      There are far worse platforms to have your business on. Not cheap, but IBM i has a solid security reputation.

      • I never worked on big iron mainframes but don't IBM emulators and virutalizers support PowerPC binaries from the as/400 to run on such a platform.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by evanh ( 627108 )

        Z-series is still Power architecture I suspect. Just beefed up with bigger caching, wider memory and extensions. Massive water cooled MCMs I presume.

  • Wow people still use this? I remember reading about RPG in the 90s. One of the columnar programming languages. It was proprietary so I never got to play with it but when I worked at a place in 2007 that had an as400 in production it was already end of life back then. Didn't even have ethernet.

    I'm just curious what kind of Big Iron actually runs this stuff anymore? Do they still sell refrigerator size towers with the bajillion CPUs? At least in Wall Street Sunfire servers are everywhere with 2,000 plus cores

    • >Didn't even have ethernet.

      Why would you want Ethernet? Tokenring is so superior!!!

      (To be fair, it kind of was superior to Ethernet in the lack of traffic collisions that "forced" then later Ethernet to go over to the model with switches to overcome)

    • I was just in Costco the other day ordering tires and that system is still running on an âoeIâ, or an AS/400 if youâ(TM)re my age.

      As for Z series and z/OS, z/VM, etc., financial and high transactional systems still rely on Z heavily. There is still a lot of COBOL out there that is too costly to rewrite.

      • I must say these comments are something interesting. If this is the mindset of our next generation of developers we are in trouble. The IBM i is still going strong. Many Fortune 500 companies still on the system and love it. RPG free with ILE is just as modern as any other languages and quite similar to OOP. I work for one of the largest IBM i ISVâ(TM)s and we still are making million dollar deals with large IBM i shops. Costco is a customer of ours and are a global success. I just finished a project

        • Im the Op, enlightening comment. Thanks. Had no idea it was that modern.

        • It's just weird in a world where the trend is away from specific vendors and suppliers and towards being able to migrate to other services that so many people are still using these single-vendor systems with complete lock-in, where you can't migrate your code anywhere else so you're always at their mercy.

  • Merlin was the product code name for OS/2 Warp 4.0. Just a random observation. It was pretty public, everyone was referring to it by that name months before there was even a beta.

  • Yes those old dinosaurs IBM upgraded this year have AI modules with neural network support that can reverse transactions or monitor in real time for stuff like stock markets and scientific research in addition to sharing cache with many cores for teraflops of power!

    This AS/400 feels like someone forgot a "0" in 2002 and typed in 2022 by accident :-D.

    The outrageous costs it makes sense to go mainframe and run these apps on a z/0S as they are binary compatible through virtualization. The mini computer is dead

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by groebke ( 313135 )

      "...losing to the cloud." --said by someone who has never had to pay the, "cloud," bill. Guess what, the first one is always free, then the price for processor time comes in, usually not too bad, then the cost for data in, well, that was a bit more than expected, and then the cost for data out... usually 2-3 times what it was, "projected," to cost. The goes on for a couple of months before the accountants notice the budget for the years has been exceeded.

      This is when the CIO finds out he is not the same lev

  • Back in 2008, I was interviewing for a job involving Zope/Plone. The interviewer looked at my resume, saw that I had worked with the iSeries, and asked: "What's an iSeries?"

  • A sysadmin can search for "AS/400" but not for "i", and everybody with two brain cells to rub together knew it at the time.

    This confirms all my prejudices about IBM.

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