Published Release Notes

No direct upgrade to multitenant setup

It is not possible to upgrade directly to a multi-tenant setup. A Pega 7 application may be exported and then imported into a multi-tenant system, with the administrator making the decision as to whether this then becomes a tenant system or a shared system.

Applications developed in versions prior to Pega 7 must be upgraded to a Pega 7 standard system, and then exported and imported into a multi-tenant system. See the Multitenancy Administration Guide for full details.

Database

Improvements to data handling were made for search indexing, agent processing, and filtering.  Scripts were provided for proper population of the database tables.

• Importing data from shared obj-external tables is now supported.
• A validation warning will now display when an unexposed property is used in filter or join conditions.
• A Global Search index may now be created across two databases.
• Agent processing on multiple nodes has been improved.
• Improvements were made to controls in Report Definition pages which are used in a dynamic grid.
• Filtering functionality involving special characters has been enhanced.
• Scripts have been provided to populate the RuleSetVersion Major, Minor, and Patch columns.

Decision Management

This release contains a number of fixes that improve the configuration and execution of Batch decisions – specifically, a number of usability improvements and addresses some issues when creating strategies on IE8.  

• Batch Decision functionality has been enhanced in the NBAM environment.
• In NBAM, users can run the strategy execution batch based on the Seed list class instead of the customer class. 
• Interaction data will now work even if Action or Organization  dimensions do not have values set.
• Running a strategy which includes a Data Import of a structured page reference will work in batch mode.
• Security was enhanced on the VBD Planner.
• The Access of Role to Object rules have been enhanced to allow users to create new Dimension Operator records.
• The NBAM Segment On Canvas will now fetch the SegMap data, even when the generated extended segment class has not been added to the Pages and Classes of the strategy.  The SegMap property will (if it exists) be added to a list of properties to fetch, even if the strategy indicates that it is not used.
• When a strategy is defined on a customer class, users may now specify the list of required properties to fetch for the input definition.
• When creating a new strategy, there is now a section to add a Strategy Results class like Business Issue or Group.

System Management

Refinements were made to out-of-place upgrade documentation and processes, as well as for how handling is performed for all of the database vendor specific nuances related to a deploying into a split schema environment.

• A script was created to run the data schema upgrade for z/OS systems.
• In a split-schema configuration, indexing has been enhanced.
• The product installer has been enhanced.
• The stand-alone Static Assembly Utility does not require a password for its process.
• The UpdateManager tool has been improved.

Decision Strategy Manager

Fixes were made that improve the configuration and execution of Batch Decisions. In particular,  the capability to use Structured Data has been enhanced. Some notable improvements have also been made to the UI of Visual Business Director.

• The structured data input configuration will now work even though there is no data.
• VBD has been enhanced to work with Version 7.1.
• The structured data input configuration will now work with nested structures.
• Association rules from Version 6.3 will now work with 7.1 structured data.

System Management

The PRPC installer has been enhanced to handle additional error conditions related to partial installs and duplicate keys; additionally, the hotfix rollback feature has been improved, and the Rulebase compare tool now supports HTTP(S) environments.

• Rollback feature has been enhanced.
• RuleBase Compare will work for secure (HTTPS) environments as well as  non-secure (HTTP) environments.
• Install will gracefully handle the presence of a duplicate key during import.
• When install fails, system will set tables back to original state.
• Remote MBean methods will now work on multi-servant load-balancing systems.
• Enhancements were made to harnesses in Split Schema systems.

Data schema error on z/OS split schema upgrades from versions before Pega 7.1.8

When upgrading to a split schema on Pega 7.x with IBM DB2 for z/OS, you see an error during the data schema upgrade when the system tries to drop the PRPC_Updatescache procedure. Because triggers on rules tables use PRPC_Updatescache, you must use the ZOSDisableTriggerScripts to disable these triggers before you update the data schema.

1. Follow the instructions in the Pega 7 Platform Upgrade Guide to upgrade the rules schema, but stop immediately before you upgrade the data schema with the upgrade.bat or upgrade.sh script. The Pega 7 Platform Upgrade Guide is on the Support > Deployment Guides page.
2. Copy the contents of the <distribution>\ResourceKit\ZOSDisableTriggerScripts directory into the <distribution>\scripts\ directory.
3. Run fixZosTriggers.bat or fixZosTriggers.sh with the following arguments:
   --action preupgrade
--dataschema <data schema name>
   --oldrulesschema <old rules schema name. If you are upgrading from a single-schema system, this is the data schema name.>
   --newrulesschema <new rules schema name>
   --automaticddl <Optional. Set to true to automatically apply the disable trigger SQL scripts.>

   For example:
   fixZosTriggers --action preupgrade --dataschema pegadata --oldrulesschema pegarules --newrulesschema newrules --automaticddl false

4. If you did not set --automaticddl to true in the previous step, run the <distribution>\schema/disable.sql script to manually disable the trigger SQL scripts.
5. Run the data schema upgrade as described in the Pega 7 Platform Upgrade Guide.

Upgrade changes system name

As of Pega 7.1.7, the following renaming behavior no longer occurs.

The upgrade process renames your system to “PRPC” and modifies any custom requestor rules in your application to use this name. After the upgrade completes, you must apply these changes to revert your system:

1. Identify all custom requestor rules (browser, batch, app, portal) with access groups that point to prior versions of PRPC.
2. Open the relevant access groups (for example, PRPC:Unauthenticated and PRPC:Agents) and update the name and version fields to point to the current PegaRULES application.
3. Reset your system name to its original value. You can set the Dynamic System Setting prconfig/identification/systemName/default or use the Designer Studio > System > Settings > System Name landing page.
4. Restart the system.

Required DB2 settings

For customers using the DB2 Version 4 drivers (“db2jcc4.jar”), it is necessary to set the custom connection property useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics to “false”.   

For customers using DB2 with WebSphere, the useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics property in the DB2 data source needs to be changed from a Boolean to an Integer and set to "2". 

EAR support for JBoss EAP 6

PRPC deployment in JBoss EAP 6 as an EAR archive is now supported. 

If you need to deploy the JBoss EAR file, go to My Support Portal and submit a Support Request. GCS can assist you with the procedure.