Wednesday, June 17, 2026 OCEAN Meeting

Outbound API Worker for IBM i - Tom Cox of Precoat Metals

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12 pm PT - 1 pm PT

Register here for this free webinar: REGISTER

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 Most IBM i shops need to call modern REST APIs but struggle with blocking I/O, token management, and payload size limits. This session walks through a production system that solves these problems with a data-queue–driven worker pattern. We'll cover: using DB2 global variables (CLOB) to bypass RPG's 16 MB limit on large request/response payloads, an OAuth token cache keyed by source/target system and environment, a separate housekeeping program that resets stale rows and re-enqueues them (including a safety check that prevents double-processing if a worker dies mid-flight), a circuit breaker that automatically suspends traffic to an unreachable target system and self-heals once it recovers, and an ordering guard that serializes calls per calling program and target system without blocking unrelated traffic.

 Tom Cox is a Senior Software Developer with seven years of IBM i experience, working across the transportation and manufacturing industries. He currently leads modernization efforts at a metal coatings manufacturer, building integrations between legacy IBM i business logic and an enterprise Oracle ERP system. His work focuses on RPG Free, DB2 for i, and designing reliable middleware patterns that keep IBM i at the center of modern enterprise workflows.