April presentations

I will be presenting at two in-person conferences this month, and look forward to seeing you at one or both of them.

The first is in Leominster, MA, for the Northeast User Group Conference, NEUGC, Tuesday April 7 - Thursday April 9.

This is my first time at this conference. I will be making eight presentations, starting with a two hour presentation on Tuesday night about SQL Views. You can see the complete schedule here.

To register go here.

Then on Monday April 27 - Thursday April 30 I will be in New Orleans, LA, for COMMON PowerUp 2026. This is the biggest IBM i conference of the year.

I will be busy here too making seven presentations. You can see the event's schedule here.

And register here.

Viewing the job's overrides

I have been burned before by file overrides, which point input, output, update, etc. both to an expected file. Anything new that comes along to help me show overrides makes me happy. The Fall 2025 Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7, has done that with a new SQL View: OVERRIDE_INFO. This view will return information about the overrides for the current job only.

I can override all kinds of files:

• OVRDBF:  database files
• OVRDSPF:  display files
• OVRMSGF:  message files
• OVRPRTF:  printer files
• OVRSAVF:  save files
• OVRTAPF:  tape files

I readily admit I have not used all of these commands.

There are three different levels I can scope an override:

Update to the technical resources roadmap

Yesterday an updated version of the IBM i technical resource roadmap was published. This web page contains a list of useful links for all things IBM i, from both IBM and other sources too. You will even find a link to this website in the Blogs section.

You can visit the page using the link here.

I have also updated the link, number 6 in the "Links to useful sites", on the right.

I am sure you will find something of interest on that page.

Using SQL to view system problems

Just a few weeks ago someone asked me if there was a way, using SQL, he could view problems on his system. What we mean by "problems" are not just error messages. These are the kinds of problems/errors that create a "problem" on your partition that you would use the DSPRPB, Display Problem, command to view.

Fortunately in the Fall 2025 Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7, was a new SQL View that displays this information: PROBLEM_INFO

Before I describe PROBLEM_INFO, I want to explain the methodology that was used before. IBM i has a Problem Management function that alerts when there are issues with hardware and system software. If I wanted to see what problems there are on this partition I would use the DSPPRB, Display Problem, command. I can enter the following on any command line:

DSPPRB

Wisconsinites join the RPGPGM.COM-unity

At my first conference of the year, WMCPA iCon, I handed out 51 ribbons to the newest members of the RPGPGM.COM-unity.

You can see photographs of these new members here.

If you see me at an IBM i event feel free to introduce yourself to me. In all likelihood I will have a RPGPGM.COM-unity ribbon on me, and you can become a member. All I ask in return is a photograph of you with it.

If you would like to learn more about the RPGPGM.COM-unity click here.

Reducing the amount of unnecessary Index Advisor data

I do check the Index Advisor on a regular basis to see what is recommended. I have found that this perspective can become overwhelmed by old data. Who cares what index were advised over a year ago? I either addressed that advice, or the program(s) were changed that used the files in that way.

Every six months I go into the tool and clear the data. This way I will only see the recent recommendations. I have an entry in my calendar to remind me to do this. Wouldn't it be nice if this could be automated.

As part of the latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7 a new Global variable is introduced that will automate the purging for me.

Limiting the amount of data SELF retains

While I love the amount of information that the IBM i will retain for us, there are times where it can become overwhelming, or redundant. An example of this is how much SELF, SQL Error Logging Facility, data do I wish to retain.

Prior to the latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7, I was responsible for purging the SELF error log table, QSYS2/SQL_ERRORT. As part of these TRs a new Global variable was introduced.

Finding Table functions with SYSFUNCS

In every IBM i recent release and Technology Refresh a few new Audit Journal Table extract functions are added. I wanted to see which one were on the IBM i partition I was using. I was tempted to use the OBJECT_STATISTICS Table function to get a list of them:

01 SELECT OBJNAME,OBJLONGNAME 02 FROM TABLE(QSYS2.OBJECT_STATISTICS('SYSTOOLS','*ALL','AUD*'))

Line 1: I am only interested in the system object name, OBJNAME, and the long (SQL) object name, OBJLONGNAME.

Line 2: The Audit Journal Table functions are in the SYSTOOLS library. I am using the wild card for the object name, in the third parameter, to find all the objects that start with 'AUD'.

The results were:

Retrieving the description for the Audit Journal Entry Types

I have, to date, been disappointed that I could not programmatically retrieve a description for the 420 Audit journal entry types. Referring to IBM's documentation was just not practical. A new SQL View in the Fall 2025 Technical Refreshes has given me what I wanted, a list of all the journal entry types with their descriptions.

The View is JOURNAL_CODE_INFO, which is found in the library QSYS2. It contains the following columns:

1. JOURNAL_CODE:  The journal code
2. JOURNAL_CODE_DESCRIPTION:  Description of the Journal code
3. JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE:  Journal entry type
4. JOURNAL_ENTRY_TYPE_DESCRIPTION:  Description for the journal entry type

The journal codes are for a specific "action", while the Journal Entry Type is the type of information. You can see this with the new View with the following statement:

Improvements to GENERATE_SPREADSHEET

The Fall 2025 Technical Refreshes brought some significant improvements to the GENERATE_SPREADSHEET SQL scalar function. These being:

• Execute SQL statement within an IFS files
• Append results from another SQL statement to an existing spreadsheet
• Create a new worksheet, and start the output at a specific row and column
• End the Java program that is started to generate the spreadsheet
• No longer have to use STDOUT to capture information from GENERATE_SPREADSHEET

I am not going to repeat what I have said in previous posts. But, I am going to give an example, below of generating a spreadsheet as a reminder:

IBM Bob formally announced

On Friday February 20 IBM's AI Bob was formally announced with a planned availability date of March 24.

You can read the announcement here.

IBM document: IBM i 7.5 vs 7.6 comparison

On January 30, IBM Support published a page called "IBM i V7R5 versus V7R6 comparison" (shame on IBM Support for not using the proper names of 7.5 and 7.6).

The page is to answer the question: What are the differences between 7.5 and 7.6?

I thought it was something useful to share because, as well as the comparison, there are links to many useful pages of information. You can reach the page here

I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Find all the services programs used by a program

Most of the time it is my curiosity, but there have been occasions, where I needed to know if a program calls a particular service program. It is easy to discover which service a programs call a service program, but what about the service programs that that those service programs calls? Now there is way to do that.

A new SQL Table function, PROGRAM_RESOLVED_ACTIVATIONS, has been added to IBM i as part of latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and IBM i 7.5 TR7.

PROGRAM_RESOLVED_ACTIVATIONS has five parameters:

1. PROGRAM_LIBRARY:  Library that contains the object
2. PROGRAM_NAME:  Name of the program or service program
3. OBJECT_TYPE:  *PGM if the object is a program, *SRVPGM if it is a service program
4. DEFERRED_SERVICE_PROGRAMS:  NO do not follow deferred activations, these are service programs that had *DEFER in the BNDSRVPGM parameter of the CRTPGM or CRTSRVPGM command. YES follow the deferred activations, this is the default
5. IGNORE_ERRORS:  NO if an error is found an error happens. YES a warning is returned; this is the default

I have only used the first three.

Using SQL TRANSLATE in place of REGEXP_REPLACE

I encountered something last week that I think may be a "bug" in either RPG or in Db2 for i. I was using the REGEXP_REPLACE scalar function, and I received an error message that made no sense. I ran out of ideas of how to overcome this error using REGEXP_REPLACE, and I went on to use the TRANSLATE scalar function. Before I tell you what the error is I need to explain my situation.

I was working upon a partition which was running IBM i 7.5 with the latest PTFs for Technology Refresh 7, TR7, and the latest PTFs for Database and RPG:

• Database (SQL) = SF99950 Level 11
• RPG = 5770WDS SJ08064

The partition's CCSID is:

01 SELECT SYSTEM_VALUE_NAME,SYSTEM_VALUE 02 FROM QSYS2.SYSTEM_VALUE_INFO 03 WHERE SYSTEM_VALUE_NAME = 'QCCSID' SYSTEM_VALUE_NAME SYSTEM_VALUE ----------------- ------------ QCCSID 273

2026 Fortra survey published

This year's Fortra 2026 IBM i Marketplace Survey results has been published. This is the twelfth year of the survey, and I for one, always find it an interesting read to learn what the other members of the IBM i community are up to.

If you did not participate in this year's survey I would like to strongly encourage you to participate in the next, as it is a good insight as to what is important to people and companies using IBM i.

You can read it here.

You can also watch the discussion about the survey with Steve Will, IBM i CTO and Chief Architect, Tom Huntington, Fortra, Kris Whitney, IBM i Chief Engineer, Tomothy Prickett Morgan, IT Jungle, here.

SEND_MESSAGE can now send message to any message queue

When SEND_MESSAGE SQL procedure was introduced in 2021, as part of IBM i 7.3 TR10 and 7.4 TR4, it would be used to send messages to the System operator message queue. I have used this many times to do so, but I have always wondered how I could do the same to any message queue? Well, in the latest Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and 7.5 TR7, this functionality was added.

Two new parameters were added to the procedure to make this possible:

• MESSAGE_QUEUE_LIBRARY:  The library that contains the message queue I want to send the message to
• MESSAGE_QUEUE:  The message queue I want to send the message to

If I omit these parameters the message will be sent to the System operator message queue.

The first example I am going to show is using the procedure as it was intended, sending a message to the System operator message queue. I am going to use the message id CPF9898, which is a general escape message, i.e. I can provide any text I want for the message to use. I can show this using the MESSAGE_FILE_DATA SQL View:

End of support for small Power9 effective tomorrow

Tomorrow, January 31, 2026, is the End of Support, EoS, for the small Power9 servers:

• L922 (9008-22L)
• S922 (9009-22A)
• S914 (9009-41A)
• S924 (9009-42A)
• H922 (9223-22H)
• H924 (9223-42H)

You can read the announcement for this from January 2025 here.

What does end of support mean?

After End of Standard Service, IBM no longer provides preventive service, new updates or fixes, or development of new machine code updates, patches, or fixes (including security fixes).

Extended Support is available for these models, see here.

I do not see any information for the EoS of the larger Power9s, E950 and E980.

Better examples for creating and consuming JSON

Whenever I am asked for an example of how to generate a JSON array or how to consume JSON data I have to point people to different posts, rather than have one that covers both. I have written this post to be that, examples of how to create and how to consume JSON.

I will be using Db2 for i to generate JSON, as I find it simpler to use than doing the equivalent in RPG.

I am going to give four examples in this post to show how to generate a simple JSON array, one with labels and the other without. Then consume the generated JSON into a format that can be easily processed by RPG. All of these examples are going to use embedded SQL in RPG programs.

I will be using my PERSON DDL Table for the input for these examples. What I want to do is to create a JSON containing:

RPG BiFs that now convert CCSID

As the computing world has become more "open" we need to process data that comes in different character sets, not just the EBCDIC CCSID in the IBM i partitions we are working on. Modern RPG has been able to handle all of the character sets, with various Built in Functions, BiF, to convert the character set from one to another.

The RPG PTFs that accompanied new Technology Refreshes, IBM i 7.6 TR1 and IBM i 7.5 TR7, included an improvement to character handling. Some BiFs will now automatically match the character types of the data in the variables used. This post is going to explain what they are, and any errors I found.

The BiFs that do this implicit CCSID conversion are:

New ACS update, 1.1.9.11, fixes vulnerability

On Tuesday, January 14, an announcement was posted on the IBM's ACS Updates page:

IBM i Access Client Solutions is vulnerable to an attacker carrying out an XML External Entity injection via a crafted XFA file inside of a PDF.

Apache Tika is used by the Run SQL Scripts feature to determine the content type of binary column data in a table on the IBM i.

IBM strongly recommends upgrading to 1.1.9.11, and discontinuing use of versions 1.1.9.8 through 1.1.9.10.

The download was not available until Wednesday morning. When I received the following alert when starting my ACS:

Another way to list files defined in Querys

After writing the post about Retrieving the print file name from a Query it struck me that I could use the same methodology to answer a question I have been asked on several occasions: Which Querys are using a particular file?

I cannot answer which Querys are using a file. I can list all the files that Querys are defined to use.

What are the steps I need to perform to get that information:

1. Make a list of all the Querys in a particular library
2. Print their definitions using PRINT_QUERY_DEFINITION
3. Extract the file names from the spool file, and write them to an output file

I am going to show you how I manually executed the above steps. And then I will show a program I created to do the same thing.

First, I need to make a list of all the Querys in a library, MYLIB. I will use the OBJECT_STATISTICS SQL Table function.

01 SELECT OBJLIB,OBJNAME 02 FROM TABLE(QSYS2.OBJECT_STATISTICS('MYLIB','*QRYDFN','*ALL'))

Line 1: I only want the Query library and name in my results.

A new way to list columns for SQL insert

The latest Technology Refreshes introduced a new way to give the columns I am inserting with an SQL Insert statement into a Table or file.

This is the DDL Table I will be inserting into:

01 CREATE TABLE RPGPGM1.TEST_TABLE 02 (IDENTITY BIGINT GENERATED ALWAYS AS IDENTITY NOT NULL, 03 LAST_NAME FOR COLUMN "LNAME" VARCHAR(30), 04 FIRST_NAME FOR COLUMN "FNAME" VARCHAR(20), 05 ADDRESS_CITY FOR COLUMN "CITY" VARCHAR(20), 06 ADDRESS_STATE FOR COLUMN "STATE" CHAR(2), 07 ADDRESS_COUNTRY FOR COLUMN "COUNTRY" CHAR(3)) ;

Happy New Year 2026 to you all

New Years is one of my favorite times of year, as we are filled with the excitement for what 2026 will bring us all.

Before we put our feelings and thoughts of 2025 behind us, what did you find interesting last year? These were the top ten popular posts from last year: