COMMON POWERUp 2026

The SQL procedural language makes it easy to create your business logic in stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined functions. Each of these routines have options that performance, but most programmers usually take the default option values without giving any thought to their impact. Learn about these overlooked performance options and other procedural language coding best practices.

Learning Objectives:

Awareness of options that impact runtime performance.

In a modern world, information gets exchanged over the web.

A request is send and an answer is returned. We do not care where the data is located. On the i data is stored within a relational database. Data access occurs with native I/O or SQL.

What if we could receive the request and provide the data directly by executing a SQL statement?

Wouldn’t that be great?

The HTTP Web Administration GUI interface can be used for deploying SQL Statements as REST APIs while the IBM Db2 acts as RESTful service provider

Learning Objectives:
- Create the integrated web services server
- Deploy the SQL statements as a RESTful web service, including how to define the database properties and how to depose the SQL statements for each HTTP-method
- Manage the deployed services

Do you still use DDS to create physical files?  Do you create an "extension" file when you need to add a field to an existing file?  Are you worried that moving to SQL is too difficult?  This session is for you.

Do you need to prevent bad data from getting into your system regardless of how it's being added? This session is for you.

Do you need to mask sensitive data, or protect data from unauthorized users? This session is for you.
If you love working really hard, enjoy cryptic column-oriented codes, or the thought of recompiling all your RPG programs gives you a thrill, then maybe this session isn't for you.

Learning Objectives:
1. Convert DDS physical files to SQL tables
2. Add audit fields that are automatically updated
3. Use constraints to ensure data integrity
4. Use Row And Column Access Control (RCAC) to control access to your data

With Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) now available as a no-charge feature in IBM i, you've gained access to a powerful feature that can significantly improve the speed of query execution. However, SMP must be approached carefully, as improper usage may produce lackluster results. This session will cover the inner workings of SMP, when to utilize SMP, and tools for controlling system-wide SMP usage.

Learning Objectives:

`- Understand how the SQL Query Engine utilizes SMP to accelerate query execution - Understand what workloads benefit most from SMP - Understand the controls available to the Database Engineer to control SMP

In this updated and award-winning session, Scott will explore the many ways that “bad actors” can attempt to subvert the security on IBM i. Whether the topic is protecting against SQL Injection, closing doors to acquiring elevated privileges, or attempting to discover unprotected objects, this session will include techniques for evaluation and protection of your IBM i. Attend this session to take a big step towards discovering and eliminating attack vectors within your IBM i!

Learning Objectives:

1) Understand the attack vectors 2) Learn how SQL can be used to discover whether you're exposed or not 3) Learn a technique for remediating the issue, should it exist

If you've ever been tasked as a developer with creating complex responses for an internal or external web service, you've likely explored multiple avenues for generating JSON from your IBM i programs. From constructing responses manually in your RPG code, to using various publicly available toolkits like YAJL, RPG NextGen, etc., there are a myriad of ways to create JSON strings with all the requisite curlies, commas, colons, quotes and hard brackets. If you're on IBM i OS 7.2 or higher, there's yet another avenue you can explore in which you let SQL do all the JSON construction work for you. The biggest benefit of this approach becomes most apparent when your JSON response requires arrays, and especially nested subarrays. Coding such responses can be a bit tedious when done on a record-by-record basis in your program, whereas by using some nifty functions you can can let SQL assemble your JSON response automatically. In this session we'll review the basics of JSON publishing functions such as JSON_Object, JSON_Array, JSON_ObjectAgg and JSON_ArrayAgg. We'll explore some practical use examples for publishing your business data in JSON, letting SQL do all the dirty work.

Learning Objectives:

* Learn the syntax of the most commonly used SQL JSON publishing functions * Understand the differences between a standard SQL select statement and an SQL statement constructing a JSON response * See how to integrate these SQL functions into an RPG program

In the new world of mobile data collection by field specialists, we ran head-on into special characters as well as emojis. This case study tells the tale of overcoming the hurdles we were stumbling over to deal with them.

Learning Objectives:

1. Learn what issues can be raised when using mobile devices to collect information from the field 2. Learn how XML support in Db2 for i was used to resolve these issues

An SQL SELECT can be much more than a simple SELECT * FROM query. Among others it includes with the GROUP BY clause a powerful data aggregation capability. A bunch of aggregate functions allows to count or summarize rows, to calculate the average over multiple rows, to determine the minimum and maximum row value. The GROUP BY clause may be widely known and used, but the HAVING clause which goes hand in hand with the GROUP BY is often a mystery. There may be other secrets waiting for being revealed … or did you know you can create all kinds of sub-totals and grand-total with an SQL GROUP BY?

Learning Objectives:

In this session you’ll learn the basic use of the GROUP BY and HAVING clauses as well as the use of multiple aggregate functions. You’ll also discover how NULL values can affect the result returned by aggregate functions. It will be demonstrated how easily all kinds of sub-totals and grand-totals can be built. You’ll also learn how to use the CASE clause for building pivot tables