Published Release Notes

Text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform

The Pega 7 Platform offers users the capability to analyze units of text, extract quality information, and translate it into business intelligence. The text analytics functionality aims to determine the positive, negative, and neutral polarities (tone) of subjective sentences. It also provides mechanisms for categorizing units of text and classifying text elements into predefined categories. You can use it to analyze text-based content including news feeds, emails, and postings on social media streams, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

For more information, see Introduction to text analytics on the Pega 7 Platform.

Data Flow service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Data Flow service configuration on the Services landing page now provides a single point of entry for enabling running data flows in batch and real-time modes. To configure the Data Flow service, you must add Decision data nodes on which to run data flows and specify the number of Pega 7 Platform threads that are assigned to process the data flow runs. Additionally, as part of the Data Flow service, you can view the number of active data flows on each node.

For more information, see Services landing page.

External keystore support in Pega Platform

Pega^® Platform now provides the ability to source certificates and encryption keys from external keystores. You use the Keystore rule to specify alternatives to the platform's database to source certificates and keys. You can choose to use a data page, a URL, or an external file in one of the following standard formats: JKS, JWK, PKCS12, KEYTAB, or KEY. Keystore information is stored in cache memory only. It is not stored on the clipboard nor is it directly accessible to the application logic.

For more information, see Creating a Keystore data instance.

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.

Adaptive Decision Manager service in the Pega 7 Platform

The Adaptive Decision Management (ADM) service is now native to the Pega 7 Platform and is supported by the Decision data node infrastructure. Because of this enhancement, you no longer need to manage the ADM service as an external service. In addition, the ADM service does not require dedicated hardware or operating system environments.

For more information, see Services landing page.

Terminate sessions for operators from outside the Pega 7 Platform

The newly added Users REST API allows an authorized administrator to terminate sessions for one or more operator IDs from outside the Pega^® 7 Platform. A typical use case for this API is to terminate a user’s session when the user's security credentials, which are stored externally, are known to have changed.

Access the Pega API by clicking Resources > Pega API.

Support for OAuth 2.0 authorization in Pega Platform REST services

Pega^® Platform REST services now support OAuth 2.0 authorization that uses federated authentication with SAML 2.0-compliant identity providers (IDPs). The OAuth 2.0-based authorization can be configured to use the SAML2-bearer grant type with a SAML token profile. This configuration is used when a resource requestor is authenticated by using a SAML2.0-compliant IDP.

For more information, see Security rules and data.

End of active support for Cosmos React version 8.6

As of the release of Pega Platform™ version 8.8 in October 2022, the early adopter Cosmos React (now Constellation) UI is no longer supported. Consequently, Pega support teams no longer accept assignments and incident reports for the 8.6 version of Cosmos React and DX SDK. Upgrade to a later version of Cosmos React or Constellation to maintain support.

Deploy revisions directly in target environments

As a revision manager, you can now directly deploy or migrate completed revisions to multiple Pega 7 Platform environments that were configured as targets by the system architect. The revision management process is faster because you do not need to package a revision as a JAR file, and then manually import that file to the Pega 7 Platform. Additionally, this solution gives business users more control over application rulesets and enables them to act more independently.

For more information, see Direct deployment of revisions.

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.