Published Release Notes

Support for Oracle TIMESTAMP data types

The Oracle TIMESTAMP data type is now fully supported throughout the Pega 7 data layer. The TIMESTAMP columns for data provide greater precision than the previously available DATE columns.

This release does not include any columns that use the TIMESTAMP data type at installation. However, after installation or upgrade:

• Any newly created columns (for example, those created when optimizing a property or defining a new table) use the TIMESTAMP column type.
• Any existing data still uses DATE values.
  • Oracle users can manually convert any existing DATE column types to use a TIMESTAMP column type instead.
  • Altering the column type for existing values in a column does not provide any greater precision for those values because they still use DATE values and not DATETIME values.

For more information, see DateTime property mapping in Oracle for Pega 7.

Updates to the Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) product

The Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) add-on has been updated with several new features. BIX 7.1.8 fully supports extraction of data from a Pega 7 multi-tenant instance. BIX can also now be run on Pega Cloud instances. Additionally, the new pxExtractDataWithArgs activity can be used by on-premises customers to schedule BIX runs by using Pega Platform agents.

For more information, see the BIX 7.1 User Guide.

Ability to periodically defragment the PR_SYS_LOCKS table

Lock management in Pega 7 is controlled through the database table PR_SYS_LOCKS. Because of the high volume of entries inserted into and deleted from this table during case processing, the data in the PR_SYS_LOCKS table can become highly fragmented, causing degraded performance over time.

You can now periodically defragment this table. The following Dynamic System Settings control when and how often defragmentation takes place using DefragSysLocksDaemon:

• syslocks/defragIntervalType

  • ​Custom interval type to run defragmentation

  • Set this first – determines whether defragmentation occurs daily at a specified hour or at a recurring interval

• ​syslocks/defragHourOfDay
  • ​​Used to run defragmentation at a specified hour
  • Accepts only integer values in the range 0-23
  • Example: run defragmentation daily at 1 AM by entering a value of "1"

  • Can be ignored if syslocks/defragIntervalType indicates a a specified periodic interval

• syslocks/defragIntervalInHours
  • Used to run defragmentation at specified periodic intervals
  • Accepts only integer values > 0

  • Example: run defragmentation every four hours by entering a value of "4"

  • Can be ignored if syslocks/defragIntervalType indicates a specified hour

For more information, see PEGA0056 alert monitors PR_SYS_LOCKS defragmentation performance.

Optimized Storage Stream for reduced BLOB size

All clipboard pages are serialized and are stored in BLOB columns named pzPVStream in the Pega 7 database. The Storage Stream (byte stream) that is stored in these BLOB columns has been optimized to make the BLOB values smaller, and to also make the encoding and reading of these values faster when opening and saving objects.

This update was completed by reducing redundancies in the stored data, redesigning the data structure to be more space efficient, and by selectively encoding only parts of the stream, instead of encoding the entire stream on each read.

For more information, see the help topic Storage Stream.

Custom PL/Java Modules for PostgreSQL 9.3

To install Pega 7 for PostgreSQL 9.3, you must first install the version of PL/Java included in your resource kit. Follow the installation instructions located in:

<Pega 7 installation directory>\ResourceKit\ResourceKitREADME.txt.

Note that if you do not install PL/Java before you attempt to install Pega 7, then the Pega 7 installation fails.

PEGA0056 alert monitors PR_SYS_LOCKS defragmentation performance

The System-Locks class contains information about locks, and the PR_SYS_LOCKS table can now be periodically de-fragmented. Accordingly, any increase in the time taken to defragment the table associated with this class results in an increase in the time taken by a requestor to acquire or release a lock.

The PEGA0056 alert indicates that the defragmentation exceeds the time threshold that is configured in the prconfig.xml file. When the alert is triggered, you can modify the defragmentation interval or disable defragmentation.

For more information, see PEGA0056 alert: Defragmentation of the table associated with class System-Locks exceeded the configured time threshold.

PEGA0055 alert detects clock drift in a multi-node clustered environment

Clocks in most of the hardware platforms run at different rates, and the PEGA0055 alert detects the clock drift on any of the nodes in a multi-node cluster. The alert is triggered when the clock drifts from the average time of the clocks in the cluster by an amount that exceeds the time threshold configured in the prconfig.xml file. You can use a network time protocol service or daemon to correct the clocks by referring to a standard external Internet time service, for example, nist.gov.

For more information, see PEGA0055 alert: Clock drift exceeded the configured time threshold.

New default system setting for SQL queries

A prconfig system setting, reporting/useLayerCakeSchemaChanges, is now enabled by default to improve the performance of SQL queries. Additionally, this setting can also be configured to disable an optimized query as a prconfig setting.

Previously, this setting was set to false by default. Starting in this release, to set this from true to false, you must explicitly add an entry in the prconfig.xml file.

For more information, see Startup check removes custom DB triggers.

Startup check removes custom DB triggers

The process for performing updates to the pr_sys_updatescache and pr4_rule_vw tables has been restructured to increase system processing efficiency. In previous releases, database (DB) triggers were used to perform updates to these tables. These updates are now performed directly within the Pega 7 engine and the DB triggers have been eliminated.

Accordingly, Pega 7 now checks at startup for any user-created triggers that are added after installation. If any triggers of this type are found, they are automatically removed.

For related information, see Custom DB triggers are dropped during upgrade.

Call functions by using the library qualified syntax

When calling a function, in addition to the existing fully qualified and unqualified function calls, you can now use the library qualified syntax:

@LibraryName.FunctionName(arg1, arg2... argn)

An example of using the library qualified syntax to call a function

Using library qualified notation helps prevent accidental library conflicts (such as when two libraries with the same name are located in different rulesets), because the library from the ruleset listed higher in the operator runtime ruleset list is selected for resolution.

For more information, see Methods for calling a function.