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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