Published Release Notes

Unit testing support for more rule types

You can now create unit tests for the following additional rule types. You can also create assertions to validate activity status. The expanded rule types for unit testing enable developers to more thoroughly perform regression testing of their application, thereby improving application quality.

• Collection
• Declare expression
• Map value
• Report definition

For more information about unit testing rules, see Pega unit test cases.

Upgrade impact

With the four new rule types, unit test execution and unit test compliance metrics will change. Reports on automated unit testing of the customer application decrease due to the increased pool of supported rules.

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

After a successful upgrade, create Pega unit test cases for the newly supported rules to see updated and accurate unit test metrics.

Customized application overview documents in App Studio

Keep stakeholders notified of the status of an application by customizing and generating an application overview document in App Studio. The overview may include information such as case types, roles, features in your application, and more. Select the chapters that you want to include in the overview, and then highlight the most relevant information by ordering the chapters. In addition to the application overview document, you can generate a detailed data model, either in Microsoft Word or Excel format.

For more information, see Creating project documents for stakeholders in App Studio, Exporting a data model into a document.

Automatic retries for the SAVE operation on records

Batch and real-time data flow runs now automatically retry the SAVE operation on records when an error occurs because of resource unavailability. This functionality ensures that the records are eventually saved if the target data set is only temporarily unavailable, for example, because of load or network issues.

You can configure the default number of retries for the entire system in a dynamic system setting. To adjust the setting to different resource allocations and operating environments, you can update that number for each data flow run.

For more information, see Changing the number of retries for SAVE operations, Creating a batch run for data flows, and Creating a real-time run for data flows.

New send email automations and enhancements

You can now configure cases, flows, and activities to compose and send guardrail-compliant emails that conform to the MIME standard by using email automations. Use the new Call-Automation method to call an automation from an activity without writing Java.

You can also now categorize error messages in automations to quickly understand the type of error that occurred. In addition, page list data types are now supported for inputs and outputs in automations.

For more information, see Calling an automation from an activity and Viewing automations.

View application quality metrics by data type

You can now view application quality metrics by data type on the Application Quality landing page. The new Data Types tab displays metrics for data types grouped by data objects, which enables you to more quickly understand the overall coverage of the application's integrations and interfaces.

For more information about data type metrics, see Application Quality landing page.

Cassandra 3.11.3 support for Pega Platform

Increase your system's reliability and reduce its memory footprint by upgrading the internal Cassandra database to version 3.11.3.

For on-premises Pega Platform™ users, after you upgrade to Pega 8.3, it is recommended that you manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3. You can upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3 on all operating systems except IBM AIX. If you do not want to upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, you can continue to use Cassandra 2.1.20, which is still supported.

For Pega Cloud Services 2.13 and later versions, Cassandra automatically upgrades to version 3.11.3 after your environment is upgraded to Pega Platform 8.3.

For information on how to manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, see the Pega Platform 8.3 Upgrade Guide for your server and database at Deploy Pega Platform.

Upgrade impact

After an on-premises Pega Platform upgrade, you still have the older version of Cassandra and must manually upgrade.

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

To upgrade Cassandra, you must create a prconfig setting or a dynamic system setting with the new Cassandra version and then do a rolling restart of all the Decision Data Store nodes to upgrade them to the latest version of Cassandra.

Scenario tests are reusable

Existing scenario tests are now reusable in different business scenarios. Before Pega 8.3, you had to create a new test every time a user interface or process flow changed significantly. Now, scenario tests are editable to help you maintain the test stack more effectively.

For more information, see Updating scenario tests.

REST API for monitoring DSM services

Decision Strategy Manager (DSM) now provides a REST API that you can use to monitor DSM services without having to access Pega Platform™. By integrating your daily monitoring tools with the management REST API, you can retrieve a list of DSM nodes, check the status of these nodes, and view details of a service from all nodes in the cluster.

For more information, see Getting started with Pega API for Pega Platform.

Improvements for automated scenario testing

Test automation authors can group related scenario tests into suites. The scenario test suites can be run manually from the Scenario Testing landing page as part of purpose-specific tests such as smoke tests, regression tests, and outcome-based tests. Additionally, automation authors or release managers who monitor tests for an application can disable or quarantine unstable scenario tests so that they do not run.

For more information about creating and managing test suites for scenario testing, see Creating test suites for scenario testing.

Simple associations for quickly joining classes

Associations now have a simple mode. Use a simple association to quickly and easily join a class to another class. The simple association defines a left join, using a foreign key in the source class and the class key in the target class. Use an advanced association for all other conditions. In addition, simple associations are drawn in the Visual data model reporting mode to visualize the relationships that are available for reporting.

Upgrade impact

The new simple mode draws a map of where all the classes defined in the application rule are drawn as nodes. Relationships between the nodes that are defined by relevant properties are drawn as lines linking the two classes. This feature only includes Case and Data classes that are defined on the Application rule form's Cases and Data tab. It also only includes relevant fields for those classes in order to define the relationships from one class to another.

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

After a successful upgrade, add the data and case type classes to the application rule in Dev Studio to have the selected classes appear as a node. In addition, if you want a relationship to display as relevant, set the properties (of the class that defines that relationship) as relevant.

For more information, see Exploring the data model.