Configure and troubleshoot IBM i TCP/IP networking in 2026: use CFGTCP to manage interfaces and routes, add IP addresses with ADDTCPIFC, configure DNS with CHGTCPDMN, diagnose connectivity with NETSTAT, PING, and TRACEROUTE, set up virtual Ethernet between LPARs, and manage Ethernet line descriptions on IBM i.
Apply the strangler fig pattern to IBM i modernization in 2026: identify seams in monolithic RPG applications, build a facade REST API over legacy RPG program calls, route traffic incrementally from old to new implementations, use an API gateway for transparent switchover, and keep DB2 for i as the shared data layer during coexistence.
Build a production REST API server on IBM i in 2026 using Node.js and Express in PASE: connect to DB2 for i with the odbc package, define routes, add authentication middleware, return JSON responses, handle errors, and run the server as a persistent IBM i batch job submitted via SBMJOB.
Read and write IFS stream files from ILE RPG programs on IBM i in 2026: use Qp0lOpen, Qp0lRead, Qp0lWrite, and Qp0lClose UNIX-type APIs, set open flags for create/append/read-only modes, handle CCSID encoding, generate CSV files for downstream systems, and parse INI-style config files at runtime.
Master IBM i data areas and data queues for inter-program communication in 2026: create and manage data areas with CRTDTAARA, RTVDTAARA, and CHGDTAARA, use the LDA local data area, declare DTAARA in RPG, build producer-consumer pipelines with CRTDTAQ, SNDDTAQ, and RCVDTAQ, and use keyed data queues for priority message routing.
Master DB2 for i window functions in 2026: use ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, NTILE, LAG, LEAD, FIRST_VALUE, and LAST_VALUE with the OVER clause, PARTITION BY, and ORDER BY to write advanced analytical SQL queries against IBM i DB2 data without self-joins or subqueries.
Master ILE RPG date and time handling in 2026: declare date, time, and timestamp fields, convert between formats using %DATE and %CHAR, perform date arithmetic with %DIFF and %ADDUR, process fiscal periods, and call CEEDAYS and CEEJULDY CEE APIs for century-safe date calculations in IBM i RPG programs.
Bring AI inference to IBM i in 2026 with IBM watsonx on Power: deploy Granite foundation models co-located with your DB2 data, call watsonx REST APIs from RPG using HTTPAPI, integrate Python-based inference pipelines in PASE, implement document classification and anomaly detection use cases, and govern production AI with watsonx.governance.
Tune IBM i memory performance in 2026: understand the *BASE, *INTERACT, and *SPOOL shared pool structure, set pool sizes and activity levels with WRKSHRPOOL and CHGSHRPOOL, diagnose paging faults using Collection Services and the WRKMEMPOOL command, configure automatic performance adjustment (APA), and size pools correctly for interactive, batch, and PASE workloads.
Send email from IBM i in 2026 using every available method: configure the SMTP server with CHGSMTPA, send plain-text alerts via SNDDST and SNDSMTPEMM from CL, build multipart MIME HTML email directly from RPG using HTTP API calls, send notifications from PASE with Python smtplib, and design a reusable CL email alert pattern for batch job failures.