Published Release Notes

BIX performance improvements for CSV output in the Pega Cloud

BIX performance has been enhanced to download up to 25 GB of data per hour for extracts from a BLOB-less class table for CSV output. This high-throughput option is available only for Pega Cloud instances that use a Postgres database. This option is used automatically for these types of extracts.

When this option is used, the –x and –c command-line options for BIX are not supported, and the checkSum field in the manifest summary is not populated. If you need these options, you can revert to the previous implementation by using a setting in the prconfig.xml file.

For more information, see BIX high-throughput data downloads in the Pega Cloud.

Add custom HTTP response headers in your application

The Pega 7 Platform supports the addition of custom security HTTP headers that are supported by your browser. For example, you can now create custom X-Frame-Options, X-XSS-Protection, and Strict-Transport-Security headers. These headers improve the security of your application against client-based attacks.

For more information, see Creating a custom application header. 

Attribute-based access control model

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is a security authorization model in which access rights are determined through the use of policies and attributes. A policy decision engine in ABAC evaluates digital policies against available data (attributes) to permit or deny access to the requested resource. For example, you can now determine access rights to cases by examining security attribute values assigned to the user and the case.

For more information, see Attribute-based access control.

Java injection vulnerability check

Pega Platform™ now notifies you of Java injection vulnerabilities in activities, functions, and stream rules at design time and at run time.  You can customize Pega Platform to check for additional vulnerabilities to ensure that your application runs without problems.

For more information, see Configuring the Java injection check.

Usability improvements to Admin Studio

Admin Studio offers a variety of usability enhancements, including:

• New access groups to differentiate between full and read-only access to Admin Studio
• A Java class lookup utility
• A requestor list for the logged-on operator
• The ability to display system node type in the logs

Also, if your environment uses Predictive Diagnostic Cloud (PDC), the Admin Studio overview page now includes a link to PDC.

For more information, see Managing requestors.

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.

Association changes after upgrade

Associations now have a simple mode. Simple associations are those that join to only one class, use a left join, and have one filter condition to a class key in the target class. Existing associations that define a simple foreign key relationship are upgraded to simple associations when opened; all others are treated as advanced associations. All associations continue to work in reporting.

Making an association simple changes only one piece of metadata; all other data on the association rule is not affected.

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 Associations.

BIX ruleset is now included with Pega Platform

The Pega Business Intelligence Exchange™ (BIX) ruleset is now included with Pega Platform™, which eliminates the need for additional provisioning for Pega Cloud customers and for a separate BIX installation for on-premises customers. To add BIX to your application, add the Pega-BIX:<version> ruleset to your application rulesets.

For more information, see Data extraction.

Upgrade impact

After a successful upgrade, the BIX ruleset is available within Pega Platform. You should synchronize the BIX ruleset and Pega rules to avoid extraction errors.

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

After the upgrade is complete, change the ruleset version for Pega Platform and BIX to use the same, latest version.

Token credentials authentication service

You can create a new type of authentication service for token credentials authentication, which is useful for offline mobile applications. With token credentials authentication, users need to enter their credentials only once in a session. Subsequent access to the server is authenticated with a token. The token can be generated by the Pega Platform™ authorization layer (OAuth 2.0) or issued by an external identity provider.

For more information, see Configuring a token credentials authentication service.

Platform truststore for validating certificates

Pega Platform™ now includes a platform truststore, to which you can import X.509 certificates that are common across platform applications. When a certificate needs to be validated, Pega Platform looks for the certificate at the connector level, then in the platform truststore, and finally in the application server (JVM) truststore. You can add, update, and delete certificates in the platform truststore without having to restart the server, which is useful when TLS certificates are changed for reasons such as key rotation.

For more information, see Importing an X.509 certificate.