IBM's new IBM i modernization Redbook: what's actually in it

IBM published a new IBM i modernization Redbook this month, titled “Modernizing IBM i Applications”. It is free, it is roughly 810 pages, and as of this writing the only coverage of it anywhere is a 150-word announcement post on RPGPGM.COM. That post has zero comments. For the most authoritative free modernization document IBM has put out in over a decade, landing on a platform whose entire community fits in a few forums, that is a strange silence.

Here is what is actually in it, how it reads, and the two ways you can end up downloading the wrong file.

What IBM actually published

The document ID is MD260020. The landing page is at redbooks.ibm.com/docs/MD260020/MD260020.html and the full PDF is at redbooks.ibm.com/docs/pdfs/MD260020.pdf. No registration, no IBM ID, no email capture. Simon Hutchinson surfaced it on RPGPGM.COM on August 20 and his count of 810 pages is where that figure comes from. IBM does not print a page count on the landing page.

IBM’s own abstract describes the scope as free-format RPG and ILE modularity, data-centric programming with SQL table definition and database design, database re-engineering, character encoding and CCSID fundamentals, test-driven development with automation, and Db2 for i performance tooling. The CCSID material is more load-bearing than it sounds, and if you want a worked example of why, what happens to EBCDIC sort order when data lands in an ASCII database is the version with a query attached. Hutchinson’s summary is blunter and better: database to front-end, everything in between, including where RPG and COBOL fit.

The author list is the story

Twenty-eight names contributed. A few of them tell you how seriously to take this.

Tim Rowe and Scott Forstie are the IBM business architects for IBM i application development and Db2 for i. If a claim about SQL behavior or an ILE construct appears in this book, it came from the people who own those areas at IBM, not from a marketing team. Kent Milligan is IBM’s long-standing Db2 for i performance name. Carol Woodbury is the security chapter’s credibility on her own. Jim Buck and Steve Bradshaw have spent years teaching this material to actual RPG developers, which shows in how the practical sections are pitched.

Then there is the part that does not usually appear in a Redbook. Several contributors are developers at partner shops rather than IBM staff. Khushi Wadhwa is an IBM i developer at Programmers.io in Jaipur with four years of experience. That matters more than it sounds. A Redbook written entirely by twenty-year IBM architects tends to assume a reader who already knows the vocabulary. A mix that includes working developers from customer-facing shops produces something closer to what a person new to the platform can follow.

What is inside, section by section

The structure is question-driven. The sections read, in order: what modernization means for IBM i, what approaches exist, why modernize the database layer, why modernize application interfaces, why modernize program code, why enable cloud and mobile access, and what the business benefits are. Then it turns practical: where to start, what roadblocks to anticipate, what problem you are actually trying to solve, what happens if you do nothing, whether modernization is about technology or process or culture, and how modernizing makes an application more secure.

Two of those deserve a callout. “What happens if we do nothing” is a section IBM did not have to write, and writing it honestly in a document that exists partly to sell the platform’s future takes some nerve. “Is modernization about technology, process, or culture” is the question every failed modernization project answered wrong at the start.

Under “why modernize program code” there is a subsection titled Developer Productivity and Talent. If you have been putting off this conversation with your CFO, that is the section to screenshot.

It reads like documentation, not like a Redbook

This is the thing nobody has told you and the thing that most affects whether you should commit a weekend to it.

MD260020 is published on IBM’s newer Redbooks docs platform, and it is not a linear Redbook. Every section runs through an identical five-part template: What This Covers, What It Is, Why It Matters, How It Works, Key Takeaways. Every single one. Dozens of times.

That has consequences. As a reference you can look things up in, it is excellent. You land on a question, you get a consistent shape, you find the takeaway without reading the preamble. As a document you read front to back, it grinds. You will read “Why It Matters” so many times the phrase stops carrying meaning.

It also means the 810 pages are not comparable to 810 pages of a classic Redbook like the old IBM i security or performance volumes. A real share of that length is repeated scaffolding. The information density is lower per page than the number suggests. That is not a criticism of the content, which is solid, it is a warning about how you plan your time. Treat it as a reference you keep open, not a book you finish.

For readers who have used older Redbooks, the format shift is worth noticing on its own. This is documentation written in chunks that stand alone and answer a single question each. Whatever the reason, the practical effect is the same: search it, do not read it.

Yes, there is AI in it, and it is Bob

The AI coverage is not generic. It is IBM Bob.

Het Patel, one of the contributors, is an AI software development engineer at IBM with about eight years in software and AI who specializes in Bob. George Van Eaton works on modernizing legacy architectures through data services and stored procedures using both Bob and GitHub Copilot. At least one contributor bio notes they joined through an IBM residency on IBM i modernization and AI-assisted development practices.

So the AI chapters carry IBM’s own tooling perspective, which is worth knowing going in. It is useful and it is also not neutral. If you want the cost side of Bob, including the part where the free trial covers base Bob and not the IBM i package, that is covered in our IBM Bob 2.0 review and the earlier Bob Premium Package review. Read the Redbook for what Bob does. Read elsewhere for what it costs.

Two ways to download the wrong thing

First trap: the download button on the MD260020 landing page serves a PDF of about 0.5 MB. That is an extract of the section you are viewing, not the full document. If you click the obvious button, get half a megabyte, and conclude the 810-page claim was nonsense, that is why. Use the docs/pdfs/MD260020.pdf link.

Second trap, and this one is worse. IBM published a different Redbook in 2014 called “Modernizing IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between”, document ID SG24-8185. Search engines still return it, its O’Reilly listing, and IBM’s support page for it right alongside the new one. Its language chapters are RPG, EGL, PHP, Java, and HTML/CSS/JavaScript. Hutchinson’s aside when he covered that book in 2014, “EGL (does any one use EGL?)”, has aged into the whole point.

Check the document ID before you invest. MD260020 is the 2026 one.

What you can act on this quarter

Skipping the strategy sections, four things in this book translate into work you can start without a budget approval:

Move table definitions from DDS to SQL DDL. The data-centric chapters make the case properly, and this is the single change that everything else depends on. You can do one file at a time.

Fix your CCSID hygiene. The character encoding material exists because encoding bugs surface at the worst possible moment, usually the first time a green screen field reaches a web API. Auditing this is unglamorous and cheap.

Run the Db2 index advisor and act on it. The performance chapters cover the tooling. Most shops have advisor recommendations sitting unread that would pay for themselves in an afternoon.

Put test automation in before you touch any code. The test-driven development material is the part most readers will skip and the part that determines whether a modernization project survives contact with production. Rewriting RPG without a test harness is how modernization projects become incidents. Rocket Software shipped its own answer to that gap the same month this Redbook published, AI-generated unit tests aimed at pushing RPG code coverage past 90%, for shops that would rather automate the harness-building than write it by hand.

If you want the broader picture of where AI tooling fits into all of this, our IBM i modernization guide covers the tool landscape and pricing that a Redbook cannot.

Where the IBM i modernization Redbook stops short

A Redbook is written to IBM’s roadmap. It answers “what does good look like” thoroughly and honestly. It does not answer “what do I do when I have four developers, one of them retires in March, and the modernization budget lost to the ERP upgrade.”

There is no staffing chapter. There is no sequencing advice for a shop that cannot do all of it and has to pick two things. There is no honest treatment of the case where modernization loses the budget fight and you need a plan for the next three years anyway. The Developer Productivity and Talent subsection gestures at the problem, but the skills gap the 2026 Marketplace Survey documented is a staffing crisis, not a tooling one, and no document written to a product roadmap is going to solve it.

That is not a flaw. It is the genre. Redbooks describe the destination. They are not written by people who have to explain to a VP why the migration is going to take longer than the vendor said. If you want the constrained-shop version, with specific prompts and a workflow built for teams that are short-staffed rather than well-resourced, that is what the IBM i AI Field Guide is for. It is the practical companion to this, not a replacement for it.

Bottom line

Download it. It is free, it is authoritative, and the author list means you can trust the technical claims without cross-checking every one.

Then be realistic about how you use it. This is a reference document wearing a book’s page count. Read the “where should I start” and “what roadblocks should I anticipate” sections properly, because those are genuinely good and they are the ones a reference-shaped format serves worst. Skim the rest, and come back to it by question when you hit something specific.

And check the document ID. MD260020, not SG24-8185. Twelve years and one EGL chapter separate them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Modernizing IBM i Applications Redbook free?

Yes. IBM Redbooks are free and MD260020 is no exception. The full PDF is at redbooks.ibm.com/docs/pdfs/MD260020.pdf with no registration, no IBM ID, and no email capture. Be careful which download button you use, the one on the landing page serves a much smaller extract rather than the whole document.

What is IBM Redbook MD260020?

MD260020 is IBM’s 2026 Redbook titled “Modernizing IBM i Applications”. It covers modernization from the database layer through program code to the user interface, including free-format RPG and ILE modularity, SQL table definition, database re-engineering, CCSID handling, test automation, and Db2 for i performance tuning. Simon Hutchinson of RPGPGM.COM puts it at 810 pages.

Is MD260020 the same as the older SG24-8185 Redbook?

No, and this trips people up. SG24-8185 is “Modernizing IBM i Applications from the Database up to the User Interface and Everything in Between”, published in 2014. It has chapters on EGL, PHP, and Java that reflect where modernization thinking sat twelve years ago. Search engines still return it for the same queries, so check the document ID before you commit to reading.

Does the Redbook cover AI tools for IBM i?

Yes, and it is IBM Bob specifically rather than AI in general. Two of the contributors work directly on AI-assisted IBM i development: Het Patel is an IBM AI software engineer who specializes in Bob, and George Van Eaton works on modernization using both Bob and GitHub Copilot. At least one contributor joined through a residency on AI-assisted development practices.