COMMON POWERUp 2026

Obtaining information from external systems or data servers has come a long way since the introduction of EDI in the 1980s! Today, heaps of publicly available web service APIs offer a much more flexible and easier-to-integrate method for pulling pertinent data into your IBM i applications. Whether it be commodity prices, financial data, current weather information, demographic statistics or whatever else you can think of, there's no shortage of information available on the internet that could complement portions of your company's business, adding valuable real-time information to your user applications.

In this session we'll put this concept to work in a hands-on fashion. The presenter will use real-world examples to demonstrate how IBM i developers can quickly find and access public web service APIs to pull data into an RPG program or UI tool using SQL.

Attendees will see three simple 5250-based interactive examples in action, along with source code they can try on their own systems.

Learning Objectives:
- Introduce the concept of pulling data from external web services, and how best to find them
- Understand the difference (and benefits) of using SQL to pull data from RESTful web services, versus "old school" SOAP-based ones
- Master the steps required to integrate a web service-consuming SQL statement into an RPG program or dashboard tool