Published Release Notes

Enhanced date circumstancing option

The date range and as-of date circumstancing features have been merged into a single feature called date circumstancing. Accordingly, the new Property and Date circumstancing option provides more flexibility when you circumstance a rule. For more information, see Specializing a rule.

Renaming a system creates the required data requestors

When you rename a system, either from the System Name landing page or by updating the prconfig.xml file, any missing data requestors are automatically created by the Pega 7 Platform. The Data Admin System Setting is also created, if it is missing.

Configure Elasticsearch index nodes to ensure availability of index files

You can now configure Elasticsearch index host nodes in a Pega cluster outside of the Search landing page. This change ensures that search index files are always available by eliminating the need for manual configuration on the Search landing page. Use the new index.directory=<index_directory> command-line setting during JVM startup to indicate that this node is an index host node and to specify the directory where the index files will be hosted.

In addition, offline Elasticsearch index nodes can now be removed by using a new prpcUtils command-line option. For more information, see Managing Elasticsearch index host nodes outside of the Search landing page.

New Schema Tools and Query Inspector landing pages for Pega Cloud

Two landing pages have been added for advanced database administration tasks for Pega Cloud customers who use a Pega-hosted instance. These landing pages minimize the operations that need to be performed outside of the Pega 7 Platform. They are available only for customers who use a Postgres database.

From the new Schema Tools landing page, you can view PegaRULES and PegaDATA database schemas, increase the size of a column, add a composite or function index, update database statistics for a table, and defragment a table.

From the new Query Inspector landing page, you can enter an SQL query and generate an explain plan.

To use these landing pages, you must have the new PegaRULES:DatabaseAdministrator role. You access the landing pages by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Schema Tools or by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Query Inspector. The individual features that you can access are determined by the privileges that are assigned to you.

For more information, see Schema Tools and Query Inspector landing pages for tuning and maintaining databases in the Pega Cloud.

Custom properties can be passed to an Oracle database

You can pass a customizable set of property values to an Oracle database when a connection is established so that an SQL statement can be run. This feature provides the ability to implement object-level security for data access from a Pega 7 Platform application by defining Virtual Private Databases (VPDs) on class tables that reference the information passed. For example, you could pass in an operator's branch office into the context of every query run against the Oracle database to ensure that the operator has access only to data that is applicable to the operator's branch.

This feature is available only for Oracle databases and for a Data-Admin-DB-Name instance that is not PegaRULES or PegaDATA, and has the same connection metadata (JNDI, URL) as PegaData.

See Passing custom properties to an Oracle database.

Pega 7 Platform supports X-Forwarded-* (XF*) HTTP headers

When deployed behind a load balancer, the Pega 7 Platform can formulate absolute URLs while responding to requests, without any additional configuration. The load balancer must be configured to use XF* headers. Consequently, the configuration property contextrewriteenabled is deprecated.

Interact with cases from external applications

You can now achieve API case integration by using the Integration case-wide property to generate code that allows you to interact with cases from external applications. The Generate create case microservice code option for microservice APIs automatically generates code that is specific to your case type. This option complements the Generate mashup code option, which generates code that you can use to embed Pega 7 Platform content in another application's web page.

Connect to external REST APIs by using OAuth 2.0

You can now connect to external REST services that are provided by web applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, by using the OAuth 2.0 protocol client credentials grant. Your Pega 7 Platform application acts as an OAuth 2.0 client to access protected API resources. For example, you can connect to Twitter by using OAuth 2.0 to obtain a collection of tweets that match a specific query.

For more information, see Accessing protected API resources by using OAuth 2.0.

Access REST services and APIs by using OAuth 2.0

You can now allow external client applications to access REST services on your behalf by using the OAuth 2.0 protocol client credentials grant. The Pega 7 Platform acts as an OAuth 2.0 provider to grant trusted applications access to functions in Pega 7 Platform applications. Additionally, you can provide access to the Pega API by using OAuth 2.0.

Improved application performance when responding to SOAP requests

When an application serves multiple requests, the contention placed on the ContextHash class is reduced because all threads can concurrently access the mHash instance variable, which improves performance. To experience this benefit, redeploy the prweb.war file for web tier deployment or redeploy the prpc_wls_jee4.ear file for e-tier deployment.