Glossary
AI on IBM i Glossary
watsonx, IBM Bob, the IBM i MCP Server, RPG modernization, and AI terminology, defined in plain English for an IBM i audience.
A
- ARCAD MCP Server ... A vendor-built Model Context Protocol server from ARCAD Software, launched in spring 2026, that exposes IBM i application metadata from ARCAD's own repository to AI coding tools including IBM Bob, Claude, and GitHub Copilot in VS Code. It is a separate product from IBM's own IBM i MCP Server.
- AS/400 ... IBM's original 1988 midrange business computer platform; the term is still used informally to refer to IBM i systems and shops even though IBM has rebranded the hardware and OS multiple times since.
- AS/Forward ... AS/Forward maps aging IBM i RPG applications with exact code analysis, then uses AI to document and convert them. It comes from Golden Path Digital, a startup founded in 2025, and is sold with professional services attached.
B
- Bob Premium Package for i ... The IBM i-specific add-on to IBM Bob, generally available June 24, 2026. It gives Bob about 40 skills and workflows and about 30 tools that work directly against QSYS, the IFS, CL, SQL and Db2 for i on a live system.
- Build with Bob ... An option added to watsonx Orchestrate's Create an agent dialog in the August 2026 release, listed by IBM as a preview, that launches IBM Bob into a workspace wired to your Orchestrate tenant to generate agents, tools and workflows from natural language.
C
- COBOL ... A long-established business programming language still running production logic on IBM i and other legacy enterprise platforms alongside RPG.
- Code for IBM i ... Code for IBM i is the free, open source Visual Studio Code extension that lets a developer browse libraries and edit and compile RPG, CL, COBOL and C source on an IBM i over SSH. It owns the connection to the system, so other extensions plug into it rather than building their own, and IBM Bob Premium Package for i installs it automatically, which makes it the layer AI coding help on IBM i actually runs on.
- CoderFlow ... CoderFlow puts several AI agents to work on the same IBM i coding task, then keeps the result that actually compiles and passes tests. Built by Profound Logic for RPG, COBOL and CL, it writes, compiles, tests and fixes code instead of only suggesting it.
D
- Db2 for i ... The relational database management system built into every IBM i operating system, tightly integrated with IBM i rather than a separately installed database product.
- DbToo ... DbToo lets RPG programs and Db2 for i data call AI models and outside services such as watsonx, Ollama and OpenAI-compatible endpoints. It is an experimental open-source SDK from IBM, and IBM says not to run it in production yet.
F
- Foundation Model ... A large, general-purpose AI model trained on broad data and then adapted, through prompting, tuning, or fine-tuning, to specific tasks such as RPG code generation.
- Free-Format RPG ... A modern RPG coding style that drops the rigid column-based syntax of traditional fixed-format RPG in favor of freer, more readable statement syntax.
G
- Generative AI ... AI systems that generate new content, such as code, text, or explanations, rather than only classifying or scoring existing data.
- GitHub Copilot ... GitHub Copilot is a general-purpose AI coding assistant that suggests code as you type, answers questions about a codebase, reviews changes and runs multi-step work on its own. It runs inside Visual Studio Code, the same editor an IBM i shop already uses for Code for IBM i, but GitHub trains it on public code and says suggestion quality depends on how much of a language sits in public repositories, which is the gap IBM filled by training its own models on RPG.
I
- i-Rays ... An AI-driven, agentless observability platform for IBM i from Warsaw-based vendor Omnilogy, launched January 21, 2026, that learns normal job, subsystem, and queue behavior to flag anomalies before they cause outages. On September 22, 2026, Omnilogy partnered with Power by Fortra to sell and support it to a wider IBM i customer base.
- IBM AIX ... AIX is IBM's UNIX operating system for IBM Power hardware, the sibling of IBM i on the same servers and the source of the AIX runtime that IBM i ships as PASE for i. On Power 11 it needs AIX 7300-03-01 or higher to run in Power11 compatibility mode, and its AI packages arrive as RPMs from the AIX Toolbox for Open Source Software.
- IBM Bob (Project Bob) ... IBM's generally available AI coding agent for IBM i, built as a fork of Visual Studio Code and tuned for RPG, CL, DDS, and SQL. Reached GA on March 24, 2026; Bob 2.0 and the IBM i-specific Bob Premium Package for i shipped June 24, 2026.
- IBM Granite ... IBM's family of open-weight foundation models, released under the Apache 2.0 license, that underpins watsonx.ai and serves as the base model fine-tuned for RPG and IBM i in watsonx Code Assistant for i and IBM Bob.
- IBM i ... IBM's operating system for Power servers running traditional AS/400-lineage business applications, with Db2 for i built directly into the OS.
- IBM i 7.6 ... IBM i 7.6 is the current release of IBM's operating system for Power servers, generally available on 18 April 2025 under announcement letter AD25-0031. It is the first release to drop Power 9 and earlier: IBM supports it only on Power 11 processors, or on Power 10 processors at minimum firmware level FW1060, so moving to 7.6 and moving to AI capable hardware are the same purchase.
- IBM i MCP Server ... An open-source, IBM-published server implementing the Model Context Protocol (MCP), letting AI agents and LLMs query Db2 for i data and take defined actions on IBM i using natural language. In beta since October 2025.
- IBM i Merlin ... IBM i Merlin was IBM's browser-based development and modernization workbench for IBM i, built from IBM, Red Hat and ARCAD Software tools running in Red Hat OpenShift containers. It converted fixed-format RPG to free format, analyzed application impact and ran Git and Jenkins pipelines, and IBM withdrew it from marketing and service on October 7, 2025.
- IBM i Services ... IBM i Services are SQL views, table functions, procedures and functions that IBM ships inside the operating system, so you can read system information with a SELECT instead of coding to a system API. Most live in the QSYS2 schema, and they are how AI agents read an IBM i box: every tool in IBM's own IBM i MCP Server is a SQL statement against a service such as QSYS2.SYSTEM_STATUS or QSYS2.NETSTAT_INFO.
- IBM i Technology Refresh (TR) ... An IBM i Technology Refresh, or TR, is how IBM adds new function to an IBM i release a shop is already running: it arrives as one Technology Refresh PTF Group, and installing it leaves the release level and the machine code level unchanged. TRs are also where the platform's AI groundwork shows up, because IBM's own IBM i 7.6 TR2 notes from July 2026 document the Code for IBM i editor extensions and the IBM Bob Premium Package for i, and list 17 new IBM i Services an agent can read over SQL.
- IBM PASE for i ... PASE for i is the AIX runtime built into IBM i, and it is where the open-source software behind most AI work on the platform actually runs. It ships as option 33 of 5770-SS1, has been a no-charge option since V5R2M0, and it hosts the yum-installed Node.js and Python builds under /QOpenSys/pkgs, including the Mapepire server that IBM's IBM i MCP Server connects through on port 8076.
- IBM Power 10 ... IBM's Power processor generation that preceded Power11, announced August 17, 2020 and shipping from September 2021, the first Power chip to embed Matrix Math Acceleration into every core for on-chip AI inferencing without a separate GPU. IBM began winding down new Power10 sales in February 2026.
- IBM Power 11 ... IBM's current generation of Power processor and server hardware, announced July 8, 2025 and generally available July 25, 2025, carrying forward Power10's on-chip Matrix Math Acceleration and becoming the first Power generation to support the IBM Spyre Accelerator card.
- IBM Power 9 ... Power 9 is the IBM Power processor generation before Power 10, available from 20 March 2018 in the scale-out S914, S922 and S924 models that IBM i supports. For AI it falls one generation short: on-chip Matrix Math Acceleration starts with Power 10, the Spyre accelerator card is a Power 11 option, and IBM states that IBM i 7.6 is not supported on Power9 and earlier processor technology, which caps a Power 9 at IBM i 7.5.
- IBM Power Cyber Vault ... IBM Power Cyber Vault is IBM's packaged ransomware defense for IBM Power servers: locked copies of your data kept apart from the running system, plus machine learning down in the storage that watches every write and raises an alert in under a minute. IBM's definition names IBM AIX, IBM i and Linux on Power, but its Power Cyber Vault site documents the AIX build and sends IBM i shops to the PowerHA Safeguarded Copy toolkit instead.
- IBM Power S1112 ... IBM's entry-level, single-socket Power11 server, announced July 15, 2026 and generally available July 24, 2026, built for edge and branch AI inferencing with on-chip Matrix Math Acceleration. It is the first Power11 machine available in IBM i's low-cost P05 software tier.
- IBM Power Virtual Server (PowerVS) ... IBM Power Virtual Server, or PowerVS, lets an IBM i shop rent IBM Power server capacity inside IBM's data centers instead of buying a box, and run the same AIX, IBM i and Linux partitions there. IBM describes it as a family of configurable, multitenant, virtual IBM Power servers with access to IBM Cloud services, web, DevOps and IBM Db2, which is how an IBM i partition ends up on the same cloud network as IBM Cloud AI services such as watsonx.ai.
- IBM Spyre Accelerator ... A PCIe4 AI inferencing card IBM ships for IBM Z, LinuxONE and Power11 systems to offload generative and agentic AI workloads from the main processor. On Power11 it is driven from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift AI partition, and as of September 2026 IBM has not documented a way to use it from an IBM i partition.
- IBM System i ... System i is the name IBM used for the AS/400 line from 2006 until April 2008, when the brand became IBM Power Systems and i5/OS became IBM i. For AI work the hardware is the catch, because System i machines use Power 5, Power 5+ or Power 6 processors and IBM states that IBM i 7.3 will not support Power 6 systems, so no System i can run a release IBM's current IBM i documentation covers.
- IBM Watson ... IBM Watson is IBM's artificial intelligence brand, named after IBM's first chief executive Thomas J. Watson Sr. and known for beating two Jeopardy champions in February 2011 with IBM's DeepQA question-answering software. For an IBM i shop the practical point is that Watson is the older name: IBM's new AI work ships under watsonx, and the one member of that family built for this platform is watsonx Code Assistant for i.
- IBM watsonx.governance ... IBM watsonx.governance is the part of the watsonx platform that watches AI models after they are switched on, checking them for bias and drift and keeping a record an auditor can read. For an IBM i shop it is an oversight layer, not a tool that runs on the box: IBM publishes no IBM i feature for it, and the only documented link is the Db2 for i data connection it shares with watsonx.ai.
- Integrated Language Environment (ILE) ... ILE is the current program model on IBM i, where a compiler turns source code into module objects (*MODULE) that are then bound into programs (*PGM) and shared service programs (*SRVPGM), and modules written in RPG, COBOL, C, C++ and CL can be bound into one program. It is also what AI modernization work on the platform aims at, since IBM's guided Bob workflows include older RPG to ILE RPG and monolithic to modular refactoring.
- iSeries ... iSeries is what IBM called the AS/400 line from 2000 under its eServer brand, and it is still the word many shops use for any IBM i machine. The distinction matters for AI work, because IBM states that IBM i 7.1 is not supported on the iSeries family, so true iSeries-era hardware stops at IBM i 6.1 and cannot run a release current AI tooling expects.
M
- Mapepire ... An open-source database access layer for Db2 for i, created by IBM and introduced in an August 2024 IBM blog post as a lighter, cloud-friendly alternative to ODBC and JDBC. A server daemon runs on IBM i and Node.js, Python, Java, and .NET Core clients connect to it over Secure WebSockets.
- Matrix Math Acceleration (MMA) ... An on-chip acceleration feature in IBM Power10 and Power11 processors that speeds up the matrix math operations used in AI inferencing, without requiring a separate GPU.
- mcp-server-db2i ... mcp-server-db2i is an open-source, MIT-licensed Model Context Protocol server that lets AI assistants such as Claude, Cursor and IBM Bob run read-only queries against Db2 for i and inspect its schemas, tables and views. It is a separate, community-built project from IBM's own IBM i MCP Server, connecting through the IBM i Access ODBC driver, the JT400 JDBC driver, or Mapepire over SSH.
- Model Context Protocol ... An open standard, released by Anthropic on November 25, 2024, that defines a client-server architecture for connecting AI applications to external data sources, tools, and prompts over JSON-RPC 2.0. IBM's IBM i MCP Server is an implementation of it for Db2 for i and other IBM i resources.
O
- OpenSearch ... OpenSearch is the open-source hybrid search engine IBM has positioned as the vector, text and structured search layer for RAG on Power, since Db2 for i has none.
- OS/400 ... OS/400 is the original name of the operating system IBM now calls IBM i. It shipped with the AS/400 on August 26, 1988, became i5/OS in 2004 and IBM i in 2008, so the RPG, COBOL and Db2 for i objects that today's AI tools read sit on one unbroken operating system line.
P
- Power Autonomous Operations ... Power Autonomous Operations is IBM's AI agent for the Power systems underneath IBM i. It monitors, diagnoses and resolves capacity issues. GA September 23, 2026.
- Profound AI ... Profound AI connects AI models to your IBM i system. Built by Profound Logic, it lets hosted and on-premises large language models work with Db2 for i tables, RPG and COBOL programs, service programs and web services, and it has supported the Model Context Protocol since June 2025.
R
- Red Hat OpenShift AI ... Red Hat's add-on platform for serving and governing AI models on a Red Hat OpenShift cluster, supported self-managed on ppc64le, the IBM Power architecture that also runs IBM i. It lets a Power shop host open weight models on its own hardware instead of calling an outside service.
- Remain Ai Chat ... A free ChatGPT-based coding assistant plugin from Dutch vendor Remain Software for Eclipse-based IBM i development tools, Rational Developer for i (RDi) and Remain's own MiWorkplace, launched in May 2023 as one of the earliest AI coding aids for RPG and COBOL on IBM i.
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) ... Retrieval-Augmented Generation hands a language model passages pulled from your own data, so it answers from your content. On IBM i, retrieval is the hard half.
- Rocket AI Enablement for IBM i ... AI capabilities Rocket Software added across three of its IBM i products on August 25, 2026: AI-generated unit tests and RPG format conversion in Rocket DevOps, 5250 workflow analysis and a chat interface in Continuous Modernization, and a replication-tuning AI Tuner in iCluster.
- RPG ... Report Program Generator, the primary business application programming language on IBM i and its AS/400 predecessors, still running the majority of production logic in most IBM i shops.
T
- Text Embedding ... A text embedding is a numerical vector representation of a sentence or passage that captures semantic meaning, produced by an embedding model and used to power similarity search in retrieval-augmented generation.
- TimeBridge ... TimeBridge is a Programmers.io package for multi-year IBM i modernization. It bundles AI tools for code analysis, documentation and RPG and COBOL conversion with advisory work and more than 300 IBM i specialists, and it launched in March 2026.
W
- watsonx ... IBM's platform for AI and data, spanning watsonx.ai (foundation models and generative AI), watsonx.data (data store), and watsonx.governance (AI governance), with watsonx Assistant and watsonx Orchestrate built on top.
- watsonx Assistant ... IBM's general-purpose conversational AI platform for building customer-facing and employee-facing chatbots and virtual assistants; not IBM i-specific.
- watsonx Code Assistant for i ... IBM's November 2025 preview announcement of an AI code assistant purpose-built for RPG on IBM i. The preview track was superseded by IBM Bob, which reached general availability in March 2026.
- watsonx Orchestrate ... IBM's AI agent and automation platform for orchestrating multi-step business workflows across enterprise applications. Since August 2026 it can launch IBM Bob from its Create an agent dialog through a Build with Bob preview, but it still ships no IBM i or Db2 for i connector.
- watsonx Orchestrate Agent Builder ... watsonx Orchestrate Agent Builder is where an AI agent is actually defined: its name, its written instructions, the large language model that reasons for it, and the list of tools it is allowed to call. For an IBM i shop the tool list is the whole story, because it accepts a Model Context Protocol (MCP) toolkit, and that is the practical way to point an Orchestrate agent at Db2 for i data when IBM ships no IBM i connector.
- watsonx.ai ... The studio component of watsonx for building, tuning, and deploying foundation models and generative AI applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) against enterprise data.
- watsonx.data ... The open, hybrid data-lakehouse component of IBM's watsonx platform, generally available since July 2023, whose documented data sources include a native IBM Db2 for i connection for querying and cataloging IBM i data.