COMMON POWERUp 2025: Full Schedule

Unlock the Power of IBM i at POWERUp 2025!

Join us in Disneyland, California, for POWERUp 2025, the premier conference for IBM i professionals. Whether you’re an experienced expert or just starting your IBM i journey, this event offers unparalleled education, hands-on workshops, and valuable networking opportunities. Stay ahead of the curve with insights from industry leaders, explore the latest innovations, and connect with a thriving community that shares your passion for IBM i. Don’t miss this opportunity to expand your knowledge, grow your skills, and power up your career!

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8:00am PDT

SQL Coding Tips and Techniques

Tuesday May 20, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT

Room 4

SQL is a very powerful language for processing data. There are many ways to write SQL statements to get the desired results. However, not all queries are created equal. This session will compare different ways to approach a problem from an SQL perspective in terms of code maintenance and performance. Taking the right approach for writing SQL helps Db2 for i help you.

Speakers

Kent Milligan

Senior Db2 for i Consultant, IBM

Kent Milligan is a Senior Db2 for i Consultant in IBM Technology Expert Labs. Kent has over 25 years of experience as a Db2 for IBM i consultant and developer working out of the IBM Rochester lab. Prior to re-joining the Db2 for i Expert Labs practice in 2020, Kent spent 5 years... Read More →

Tuesday May 20, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

9:15am PDT

Management by the Movies!

Tuesday May 20, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT

Room 4

Do you aspire to be a more effective leader? Are you tired of dull books about abstract leadership and management concepts? Perfect! Then come join this lively session! Using clips from well-known movies and TV shows, we will demonstrate key leadership traits and techniques you can develop within yourself. Seeing these approaches to leadership come to life on the big screen may just make you look at leadership in a whole new way. We will discuss each of the clips shown, to understand what they can teach us about leadership.

Speakers

Steve Wolk

CTO, PC Richard & Son

Steven Wolk is the Chief Technology Officer for PC Richard & Son, a family owned and operated chain of 66 appliance and electronics superstores located throughout NY, NJ, CT, and PA. Founded in 1909, PC Richard has always been known for honesty, integrity, and reliability throughout... Read More →

Tuesday May 20, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

IT Leadership & Management

10:45am PDT

Fun with JSON Publishing: Letting SQL Do the Dirty Work

Tuesday May 20, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT

Room 4

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.

Speakers

Rob Swanson

Senior Partner, CNX Corporation

Rob has worked as an in-the-trenches IBM i developer since 1992, with the past 15 years focused on developing modernization efforts for legacy systems written in RPG. Currently serving as Senior Partner for CNX Corporation in Chicago, Rob is a strong advocate of introducing highly... Read More →

Tuesday May 20, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programming: General

3:15pm PDT

Dueling way to prevent, find, resolve error message to your systems

Tuesday May 20, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

Room 4

Presenters: Marina Schwenk, Shelly Petty, Simon Hutchinson

This fast paced presentation, "the duel", Marina Schwenk and Simon Hutchinson will offer methods and alternatives for the following:

How to find error messages
How to find the joblog for the job that has errored.
Determine the cause of the error.
Demonstrate various approaches to prevent errors.
Create RPG, CL, & SQL code that is "hardened" to handle issues when they happen.

Shelly Petty will adjudicate the duel & award points to each of the presenters, & at the end of the presentation announce the winner.

Speakers

Simon Hutchinson

Founder & author, RPGPGM.COM

Simon Hutchinson has been writing his highly acclaimed IBM i blog, RPGPGM.COM, for eleven years sharing his knowledge, experience, and giving many detailed examples of the latest RPG, SQL, and CL. His work has led him to be recognized by IBM as an IBM Champion for Power and IBM i Community Advocate. He is a subject matter expert for COMMON Americas, awarded... Read More →

Marina Schwenk

Tuesday May 20, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programming: General

4:30pm PDT

The simplicity of audit columns

Tuesday May 20, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT

Room 4

Simon will explain the simplicity of using Db2 audit columns for providing audit columns to your DDL tables & DDS files. He will give examples of how to create system maintained columns or add them to existing tables & files. Then show how they can be hidden from common users.

Speakers

Simon Hutchinson

Founder & author, RPGPGM.COM

Tuesday May 20, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

5:05pm PDT

Preparing your RPG for the year 2040

Tuesday May 20, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT

Room 4

The year 2040 is only 15 years away. Why is this an issue? Any 6 long date in your applications probably relies on the “1940” date rule. You are going to start thinking about what to do and how to identify all the places that this may cause a problem.

Simon Hutchinson will demonstrate some of the methods that IBM has given to help us start this journey.

Speakers

Simon Hutchinson

Founder & author, RPGPGM.COM

Tuesday May 20, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programming: RPG