COMMON POWERUp 2025

COMMON POWERUp 2025

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!

10:00am PDT

Give me an hour, and I'll give you a week!

Monday May 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am PDT

"Hey, do you have a minute?" We're asked that question many times every day, and while we say yes, the sad answer is... NO! Our lives and our careers are busier than ever. Feel like you're barely keeping your head above water at work? You're not alone. We struggle to keep up with the demands of our careers while retaining some semblance of balance between work and personal time. Come to this session and learn the life hacks you need to supercharge your productivity! By the end of the session you'll have the tools to save over 168 hours - that's one full week - every year! What will you do with all that extra time?

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 →

Monday May 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Personal Development

11:15am PDT

SQL 101 Bullet Train

Monday May 19, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT

Hang on as we go from 0 to 300 MPH with SQL. We'll start out slow by covering the basics of creating tables, inserting, and selecting data. We pick up speed as we discuss Constraints, Join Types, and SQL Views. We will be going at full speed when we learn how to leverage Functions, Procedures, and Db2 Services! We will bring it all back to the station as we use all our SQL skills to build an example project that combines everything we've learned along the way.

Speakers

Patrick Behr

Software Developer / Architect, Seiden Group

Monday May 19, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

3:15pm PDT

Revving up SQL Performance with Indexes

Monday May 19, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

One of the most important things needed to improve SQL performance is to have the proper indexing over tables, especially as table grow in size. Indexes are so important that the database provides index advice for assistance. However, advice is no substitute for knowledge and proper understanding of indexes. As with all advice, it must be reviewed and good judgment applied on when to create them.

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 →

Monday May 19, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

4:30pm PDT

How many indexes is too many?

Monday May 19, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT

The creation of indexes can have a positive impact on query performance. However, an index also has a cost since it has to be maintained every time rows in the associated table are inserted, deleted and updated. This session will the discuss indexing tradeoffs including the review of a benchmark test created to quantify the positive & negative impacts of indexes. In addition, you will learn about tooling that can be used to identify your most valuable and least valuable indexes.

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 →

Monday May 19, 2025 4:30pm - 4:50pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

5:05pm PDT

IBM i Unit Testing Now in VS Code!

Monday May 19, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT

Join us for an in-depth look at the new IBM i Testing extension for VS Code. In this session, we will demonstrate how you can now write and execute RPGUnit test suites (supporting both RPG and COBOL) directly within the editor using local files or source members. We will cover the basics of the RPGUnit test framework, guide you through the installation process, and demonstrate how to execute tests with code coverage. If you are looking to adopt new and modern tooling, come check out this exciting addition to the IBM i development ecosystem in VS Code.

Speakers

Sanjula Ganepola

Monday May 19, 2025 5:05pm - 5:25pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Program Testing

8:00am PDT

SQL Coding Tips and Techniques

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 →

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

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

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 →

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

Programming: RPG

8:00am PDT

Take Control of Your IBM i Prestart Server Jobs

Wednesday May 21, 2025 8:00am - 10:15am PDT

Prestart server jobs are used to handle requests from clients in the network. There are many uses of prestart jobs on IBM i, the most common is the database server. Prestart jobs present many challenges for how to understand what is happening on the system, what work requests these jobs are handling, and generally how to manage them. This session will review all the key characteristics of prestart jobs, provide many tips to better understand what is happening on your system, and review how you can use subsystem configuration to better manage your prestart jobs.

Speakers

Dawn May

Wednesday May 21, 2025 8:00am - 10:15am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Technologies Integrated with IBM i

10:45am PDT

A customer's journey: From Legacy to WOW!

Wednesday May 21, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT

We’ve all heard the saying: Don’t be afraid of change - be afraid of not changing. But let’s be honest - change is hard. Whether it’s outdated technology, entrenched processes, or resistance from within, modernization can feel like an uphill battle. Does it frustrate you when your applications are labeled legacy? You're not alone. This session is a real-world case study of how one retailer navigated the journey to modern application development using IBM technologies, including Power, IBM i, Ansible, and more. Along the way, they didn’t just modernize their apps—they transformed how IT is perceived within the company. IT is in a prime position to drive meaningful change. But how do you start? How do you overcome resistance and build excitement? In this session, you’ll learn practical strategies to shift mindsets, gain leadership buy-in, and turn legacy into WOW!

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 →

Wednesday May 21, 2025 10:45am - 11:45am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Developing Business Skills

3:45pm PDT

Managing the startup and shutdown of IBM i

Wednesday May 21, 2025 3:45pm - 6:00pm PDT

In days gone by the IBM supplied program QSTRUP combined with a couple options on CHGIPLA was good enough for most IBM i shops. It started what seemed to be needed and anything else we stumbled through after each IPL. When it was time to shut down a PWRDWNSYS or ENDSBS command took down whatever was running. We were happy.

Today though we often see dozens of subsytems running many web servers, other needed batch jobs and services. We see monitors and queue processing jobs and many writers. For security purposes we should be starting only the TCP servers that we need, not all of them. Likely we should not start IPV6 and start things in sequence as well.

Further considerations may be needed in an HA environment. These include not starting jobs until iASPS are available and starting different IP interfaces and services depending on production or backup mode of the server. We may want to handle special startup modes while doing PTFs, backups or other system maintenance.

In this session we will work with customizing that startup. We'll discuss staring PASE jobs with QSH, web server jobs and more. Finally we will also work with sequencing the shutdown of the system. As part of this we'll discuss some simple ways to know what needs to be shut down and smoothly handling that.

Speakers

Larry Bolhuis

Cloud and Datacenter Engineer, IBM Champion, Service Express Inc.

Larry has grown up with computers since his father became a CE in 1967. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Calvin College in 1982 and soon after began working on IBM midrange equipment with the S/34 and S/36. Larry began working on the As/400 at its introduction In 1988.After spending many years as a developer Larry began working on communications, networking, and systems management tasks. Years of... Read More →

Wednesday May 21, 2025 3:45pm - 6:00pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Systems Management

8:00am PDT

Intro to the SQL Procedural Language

Thursday May 22, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT

SQL includes a full-fledged programming language, SQL PL. Come learn about the programming constructs, including error handling, that this language contains. You will leave with all the knowledge you need to start writing your own SQL functions and procedures.

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 →

Thursday May 22, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

9:15am PDT

SQL Plan Cache Uncovered

Thursday May 22, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT

This session explains how the SQL Plan Cache is used by Db2 for i to support the execution of your SQL & non-SQL queries. In addition, the session will review Plan Cache related tools & services that can help you identify query performance problems.

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 →

Thursday May 22, 2025 9:15am - 10:15am PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

11:15am PDT

AI Meets Node.js: Unlocking the Power of Large Language Models in JavaScript

Thursday May 22, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT

Artificial Intelligence and large language models (LLMs) are reshaping industries and sparking innovation like never before. While AI development has long been associated with Python, the growing demand to seamlessly integrate AI into the web applications that drive the digital world is changing the game. So, do we transform web developers into Python experts—or do we empower them to leverage AI with the tools they already know?

In this talk, we’ll take you on an exciting journey of exploring LLMs with Node.js and JavaScript. Discover how leading AI libraries like LangChain, Ollama, and LlamaIndex are bringing JavaScript into the AI fold as a first-class citizen. Learn how surprisingly easy it is to integrate powerful AI capabilities into your applications with Node.js, and walk away inspired to embark on your own AI journey—no Python required! Whether you’re an AI enthusiast or a JavaScript developer curious about the future, this session is your gateway to building smarter, AI-powered applications.

Speakers

Michael Dawson

Thursday May 22, 2025 11:15am - 12:15pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programming: General

1:30pm PDT

Stored Procedures for Hybrid Development

Thursday May 22, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT

Accessing business logic from Open Source application and off platform has evolved a great deal over the years. In this session we’ll look at some of the reasons for centralizing this business logic in the database via Db2 Stored procedures. We’ll look at RPG and SQL procedures and work through examples of how these are used from exhibit languages like PHP and Python.

Speakers

Mike Pavlak

Solution Architect, Perforce Software

Mike Pavlak has been working with IBM midrange solutions since 1992 and IBM Mainframes before that. After years of developing applications using RPG, CL and PHP he managed IT development and IT for power protection manufacturer Tripp Lite. Later Mike was instrumental in developing... Read More →

Thursday May 22, 2025 1:30pm - 2:30pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Programmer Tools

3:00pm PDT

Forget ODBC! Here’s a New Db2 Connector

Thursday May 22, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT

Connecting to Db2 has never been easier or more efficient. Join us for an in-depth session on Mapepire, a powerful open-source library designed to simplify and enhance your Db2 database interactions. This library offers a more straightforward alternative to traditional JDBC or ODBC connections, ensuring developers can achieve optimal performance and scalability without the usual complexity. With support for multiple programming languages, including Java, JavaScript, Python, this versatile library meets the needs of diverse development environments. Attendees will gain insights into its architecture, see practical demonstrations, and learn best practices for integrating it into their projects.

Speakers

Sanjula Ganepola

Thursday May 22, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database

5:00pm PDT

Simon's top 10 SQL favorites

Thursday May 22, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT

IBM Champion Simon Hutchinson has written a lot about modern Db2 for i and SQL on his blog. In this session he will take you through his top 10 favorites. You will have to attend to learn what these cool SQL tricks and tips are! He always keeps this up to date with his favorites from every new release and Technology Refresh.

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 →

Thursday May 22, 2025 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Room 4 1150 Magic Way, Anaheim, CA 92802

Database