New TRs, IBM i 7.5 TR2 and 7.4 TR8, announced

The Spring 2023 Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.5 TR2 and IBM i 7.4 TR8, have been announced today.

The availability dates for the PTFs are:

• Base TR PTFs May 5, 2023
• Db2 (SQL) PTFs May 19, 2023
• RPG PTFs included in the Db2 fix pack

All the information about these TRs can be found:

• IBM i 7.5 TR2:
  • IBM Support page:  These get better every TR
  • RPG cafe with RPG additions and enhancements
  • IBM announcement
• IBM i 7.4 TR8:
  • IBM Support page
  • RPG cafe with RPG additions and enhancements
  • IBM announcement

Additions and changes to the RPG programming language are:

• %SPLIT BiF new parameter
• New BiF %PASSED and %OMITTED to test if parameter was passed
• SELECT op-code enhanced
• New op-codes WHEN-IS and WHEN-IN
• New parameter added to the CRTBNDRPG and CRTRPGMOD commands

Lots of new and enhanced functionality added to SQL:

• 20 additions
• 14 enhancements

There are two things that are exclusively for the 7.5 TR, that are not in the 7.4 one:

1. RESTRICT ON DROP enhancement
2. SQE performance and compression enhancements

Rather than list them here I am going to refer you to the IBM Support document, link above. Some look very interesting.

There is the promise of a new version of Access Client Solutions, ACS version 1.1.9.2, I have checked the download site for ACS and the latest version listed is still 1.1.9.1.

Enhancements to Navigator i will be coming too.

I cannot wait for May 19 when these PTFs become available, and I can start working with them.

More information came later, you can catch up with that here.