WMCPA 2021 May Meeting 

Join us for the last meeting before the summer break!  The May 2021 meeting will be featuring IBM Champion Alan Seiden. 

As an IBM Champion and founder of Seiden Group (https://seidengroup.com), Alan Seiden and his team help large and small organizations adopt open source technologies such as PHP, Python, and Node.js with DB2 for i and RPG business logic. He led the creation of Seiden CommunityPlus+  PHP for IBM i with optimized components and professional support, co-developed the PHP Toolkit with IBM, and was one of the first Zend Framework certified engineers. An award-winning speaker, Alan has been called “the performance guru of PHP on IBM i.” Alan’s passion for the IBM i community inspired him to host the CIO Summit twice per year and to mentor talented younger developers. His “Open Thinking” newsletter (https://seidengroup.com/tips) helps him stay in touch with community friends and share tips, news, and guidance about open source on IBM i.

Meeting is free for members and will be done via webex.

Session 1: ODBC Up and Running

Session 2: PHP in 2021 - What's New and Exciting on IBM i

Session descriptions:

ODBC Up and Running

IBM i now provides an ODBC driver for Db2 that works just like the one on Windows, Linux, and Mac. What does this mean for web and open source developers? Developers can now code “locally" on their PCs, then deploy the same code to IBM i for production. Learn best practices for using ODBC with open source languages, including Node.js, PHP, and Python, and R, as well as .NET, and how to convert proprietary Db2 driver functions to standard ODBC functions.

Learning objectives:

• How to install and configure ODBC on IBM i
• How ODBC can help you develop software that can run on any platform while accessing IBM i data
• How to use ODBC from the various languages safely and effectively, avoiding common mistakes

PHP in 2021 - What's New and Exciting on IBM i

2021 is an exciting year for PHP on IBM i. With thousands of IBM i shops running the PHP language, including for mission-critical web and mobile applications, PHP continues to improve, with a new version (PHP 8) and new ways to install it on IBM i that are fast, easy, and flexible. No more waiting years for your PHP upgrade. Now you can stay up to date and take advantage of the speed and features of PHP in 2021. Topics to be included: 

1. What people should know about PHP 8

2. New RPM-based PHP installation options, including how to replace Zend Server Basic

3. What innovative IBM i companies are doing with PHP

4. New database connectivity options

5. Enhancements to the PHP toolkit (RPG/CL calls)

6. PHP performance profiling to speed up your applications

Register Now!