WMCPA iCON2025

Simon Hutchinson has written a lot of articles on his blog about the modern RPG programming language. This session covers a mixture of his favorite RPG Built in Functions, BiFs, and ones he thinks everyone should be using. This includes some BiFs from the latest rounds of Technology Refreshes.

Getting Started VS Code Workshop
This is a great opportunity to get started with VS Code and the IBM i extensions. Many RPG developers have never used VS Code and getting started with the IDE can be frustrating. This lab will introduce the attendees to VS Code and IBM i development environment

Attendees will need a laptop and will be provided with a login to an IBM i system. Allowing them to work through some simple tasks. At the end of the Lab, you will have an understanding of the following topics.

Topics covered will include:

Overview of VS Code
Introduction to the VS Code IDE
Installing IBM i extensions
Connecting to the IBM i system
Editing and compiling modules, service programs and creating runnable RPG objects
Running and debugging a program
Using DB2 in VS code

Getting Started VS Code Workshop
This is a great opportunity to get started with VS Code and the IBM i extensions. Many RPG developers have never used VS Code and getting started with the IDE can be frustrating. This lab will introduce the attendees to VS Code and IBM i development environment

Attendees will need a laptop and will be provided with a login to an IBM i system. Allowing them to work through some simple tasks. At the end of the Lab, you will have an understanding of the following topics.

Topics covered will include:

Overview of VS Code
Introduction to the VS Code IDE
Installing IBM i extensions
Connecting to the IBM i system
Editing and compiling modules, service programs and creating runnable RPG objects
Running and debugging a program
Using DB2 in VS code

APIs allow IBM i to connect with other systems safely and securely, using the languages you already know. Because IBM i has API options abound, you can use your favorite languages and tools.

This talk shows many ways to send and receive data safely, using IBM i business logic, with code examples using various free tools and languages, including RPG, PHP, Python, and Node.js. You will feel empowered to provide and consume APIs with the many examples given here.

Learning Objectives:
Understand basics of APIs and why they are helpful and secure
Learn several RPG techniques to create and call APIs
Learn several open source language ways to create and call APIs, using PHP, Python, and Node.js

In this session, I will demonstrate the benefits of procedure driven RPG. Together, we’ll explore real world examples of how this mindset has improved code written by myself and my team with regards to three facets: Readability, maintainability and reusability. All three of these benefits translate into a more efficient development team. What if I told you some of your procedures can even be written by your AI code assistant? I’ll show you some fabulous examples!

With the announcement of IBM Rational Open Access: RPG Edition, the capabilities of native RPG have been expanded significantly. But setting out to write an OAR handler can look daunting at first. This session will look at what Open Access: RPG Edition is, and at how to use it to work with data in remote database systems using familiar file operations.
Understand the basics of Open Access: RPG Edition
Learn about designing an Open Access application and an Open Access handler
See how to it all goes together to work with remote non-i5 data sources

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.
Learning Objectives:
1) Learn how to create and execute stored procedures in SQL and HLL (RPG).
2) See examples of how to use Db2 Stored Procedures in OSS languages.
3) Review tips and best practices when working with Db2 Stored Procedures.

Our businesses often want reports delivered in Excel format. While there are several ways to create these spreadsheets using RPG, they all have some drawbacks. Writing to the current XLSX format for Excel spreadsheets may seem a formidable challenge, but we will see that the prospect of success is better than it might seem at first. And we will see how to use tools such as CGIDEV2 to accomplish the task of creating these modern, highly-functional spreadsheets. This is the first of 2 sessions, presenting the basic information needed to accomplish this task. The "advanced topics" session presents some interesting things that can be done using this methodology.
Understand the internal structure of modern Excel (XLSX) files
Identify various reporting scenarios, such as multiple sheets, static informational sheets, etc.
Understand how to design and implement an Excel (XLSX) application

Learn why service programs are so awesome. We will weigh the pros and cons of different options we have for creating shared routines. We’ll learn how to create a service program and how easy it is to use these shared procedures in our applications. We will discuss the importance of binder source and how using it can make updating our service programs painless.
1. What is a service program
2. How to create a service program
3. How to use a service program

Whether your team admits it or not, we all have legacy code. In this session, we will explore easy ways to modernize these programs and improve performance. We will delve into these 3 specific situations:
Converting RPG programs to SQLRPGLE
Using SQL when multi-member files are in use
Converting PF files to SQL tables

Our businesses often want reports in Excel format. There are several ways to create these spreadsheets using RPG, but they all have some drawbacks. While writing to the current XLSX format for Excel spreadsheets may seem a formidable challenge at first, we will see that things are not so bad as they might seem. And we will see how to use tools such as CGIDEV2 to accomplish the task of creating these modern, highly-functional spreadsheets. This is the second of 2 sessions that looks at more interesting things that can be done using this methodology.
Understand challenges and opportunities when creating spreadsheets
Understand the use of shared strings and learn how to implement them
Understand grouping and outlining and learn how to implement them