Happy New Year, 2022!

Last year was blighted by the COVID pandemic again. I am sure all of us are glad to see another year dominated by the virus behind us. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we might start returning to a more "normal" life this year.

Despite all the restrictions upon our working lives IBM still managed to bring us a new Power server series, Power 10, starting with the E1080 server. As well as two Technology Refreshes. You can read about it all on this website.

Every year I look to see what were the most read posts of the year. These were:

1. Creating PDF using SQL
2. IBM i new logo
3. Calculating differences between dates in SQL
4. Finding fastest way to copy data from one table to another
5. New ACS 1.1.8.7

If your favorite is not on the list please use the comments, below, to let me know which one was and how you used the information contained within.

Enough of last year, what of the new year?

IBM's own Power Roadmap has a new release coming this year. Several people have let me know that this new release will be IBM i 7.5 .

As IBM only actively supports two releases I expect that when the new release is launched there will no longer be Technology Refreshes for IBM i 7.3 . If your Power server can run IBM i 7.4 this is the time to move up to it so you will still be able to keep current with the latest refreshes and enhancements from IBM.

There are a number of anniversaries this year:

• 63 years:  RPG programming language
• 34 years:  AS/400 and OS/400, ancestor of the IBM i operating system and the Power servers
• 27 years:  RPGLE (ILE RPG)
• 21 years:  Free form calculations in RPG
• 9 years:  Free form definitions in RPG
• 7 years:  Totally free form RPG. I still think IBM should rename this version of RPG to RPG for i

This year is this blog's ninth anniversary too!

Let's all raise a glass of our favorite beverage and make a toasts to give thanks for IBM i and all the good things that happened to it last year. Then raise a second glass in anticipation of what this year will bring to all of us.