Age: 24

Job: Consultant for IBS Technology and Solutions in Sint-Maartens-Latem, Belgium

What would you be if you weren't an i programmer?
A car mechanic. I have always had a big interest in cars, both outside and inside.

A miniature Christmas tree led Guy Debrabandere of Belgium to an i career.

A teacher at a technical institute encouraged him and his class to create a small tree with colored LED lights and a nine-volt battery, not an easy task for preteen students.

"After we carved out the Christmas tree, put up a chip (and port chips), soldered a dozen wires, and placed our battery in its socket, it was time to try out what we worked on for two days," Debrabandere recalls. "The lights flared up, and so did my smile. I'll never forget that feeling. It made me so proud to see it work."

The 24-year-old takes pride now in mastering programming challenges for clients as a consultant at IBS Technology and Services in Sint-Maartens-Latem. The company won an IBM partner award in 2006 in the category "Best System i."

"I believe the biggest strength of a System i is its integration," he says. "It has DB2 but can handle SQL tables as well. It compiles CL and RPG but C, C++, COBOL, and Java as well. You can link your existing programs to a web service simply by using an easy wizard in WDSC. Basically, the i supports everything you need in your business and more. Because of its tight integration, it's incredibly stable and secure."

Born in Kuurne and now living in nearby Waregem, Debrabandere studied electronics and worked for a time in Brussels for the multinational company Accenture Technology Solutions, where he tackled a project for Fortis. "I learned tons of new things at Fortis about the System i, RPG, CL, banking terms, analysis, release management, system maintenance, and much more thanks to good colleagues. We regularly worked late hours, but we did it with pleasure," he says, noting that he was the youngest programmer on the team.

At IBS, Debrabandere works on a particular application with a modular, flexible, pre-defined performance that he and his crew can adapt to the needs of clients. "We make sure that our customers can exchange electronic messages in different formats and through different connectors and get mapped into DB2 tables on the i," he explains.

"I can combine programming, analysis, the setting up of new messages and communications, on-demand requests, and I come in touch with all kinds of industries, requirements, and people." He praises the "superb" team surrounding him and says loves being a consultant.

One of his biggest challenges involved creating a way to quickly parse, translate, and pump into a car company's stock management system a daily Delivery Just in Time (DELJIT) message with more than 1.2 million segments. He wrote a complete custom program that buffered the smaller recurring elements into the memory combined with the knowledge he gained from EDI parsing. "The program clearly outruns any other EDI packet," Debrabandere notes, adding that what used to wipe out a day or more now takes six or seven minutes to accomplish.

In another project he helped a textile company find a way to check whether VAT numbers really existed and to retrieve the names of the owners. He and a colleague experienced with web services designed a small service program that accepts each VAT number and country code and then checks the VIES SOAP service if it exists and determines the holder of the VAT number.

Debrabandere describes his main areas of expertise as B2B traffic and programming. "I work with EDI/XML messages and parsing every day," he says. "In terms of programming, there is always a new standard, a communication protocol, or a feature we haven't implemented. Although I mostly use RPG IV, I'm not afraid to use another language if it suits the needs better."

His work-station reveals a transportable Lenovo ThinkPad R61 with a docking station. He runs Open Solaris and Windows XP as his main operating systems, along with an Ubuntu operating in Sun's VirtualBox. His installed software includes tn5250, Lotus Notes, Eclipse, OpenOffice, Firefox, Apache, IBM UDB Express, and Advanced Integration of DB2 Applications (AIDA), his company's product. "The only thing keeping me from switching to Linux permanently is the IBM Windows-only software. Otherwise, I would run Windows in a virtual box as well," he says.

Hot issues in his field include cross-platform traffic and programs and web services, Debrabandere says. "Everybody wants to be able to access everything from anywhere in a secure way, controlling the information. Access through the Internet is becoming extremely popular. Just think about putting that huge catalog online for your business, with corresponding security, personalized prices for your clients, sending delivery notes and invoices automatically, while offering the possibility to trace your package with a barcode. For me, that's the future, and the i is capable of all those things."

Nevertheless, Debrabandere notes, the i community faces challenges in keeping up the pace in an evolving IT world. He sometimes questions IBM's definition of multiplatform. "RDi, previously known as WDSC, is a very powerful programming tool. It supports multiple programming languages, error checking, debugging, and much more--everything that a programmer desires.

"IBM supports ODF, is pushing Java, and even has AIX (Linux). But the i community has been asking for a multiplatform programming environment such as RDi for years.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not questioning the effort IBM puts in the i, but the company's strategy could really use more punch in striving for multiplatform support."

He says he appreciates the i community and organizations such as COMMON and its Young i Professionals (YiPs). "I'm proud to say that I'm a System i programmer."

Debrabandere plans to stand by his i job, taking time when he can to restore a 1968 Pontiac Trans Am, dance the Cuban Salsa, and ride his bike. In addition to his native Dutch, he speaks English and French.

"I am trying to evolve as much as I can, both professionally and as a person," he says. "I'm planning on learning more about Java in combination with RPG and to continue to grow within IBS. My biggest dream is to work and live abroad in the U.S. or Australia in the future."