Published Release Notes

Extract data from Pega Cloud to an on-premises database

You can now use Pega^® Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) to extract data from Pega Cloud to an on-premises relational database management system. Extracting data from Pega Cloud directly to an on-premises database improves efficiency by eliminating the need for file extraction and the development of a file extraction infrastructure.

For more information, see Extracting data from Pega Cloud to an on-premises database.

Improved connection pooling performance

HikariCP is now used for connection pooling for databases that are configured by using a URL. HikariCP improves connection pooling performance; however, more database connections might be used than in previous versions of Pega^® Platform.

As a result of the switch to HikariCP, you cannot use the System Management Application (SMA) to get diagnostic data from your application. For instructions about how to get diagnostic data by using REST services, see Obtaining connection pool diagnostic data by using REST services.

No longer supported translator configuration options

The following translator configuration options are not needed and are no longer supported. If you previously configured any of these system settings, remove them from the system settings to avoid a warning message. For example, if you set translator/useparserfamily, the following message is displayed at startup: "Translator option, 'translator/useparserfamily' is not needed and no longer supported. Remove this from the system settings."

• translator/useparserfamily
• translator/usecodegenerator
• translator/usenativedouble
• translator/optimization/use71BlockAnalysis
• translator/optimization/use71ConstantFolding
• translator/optimization/use71AssignmentTypeSimplification
• translator/optimization/use71IntrinsicFunctions
• translator/use71PropSetGeneration
• translator/use71ParserAssignment
• assembly/model/useBlock4ContiguousSets
• /translator/pandc/comparepandcalgorithms
• /translator/pandc/use6xalgorithms
• /Compatibility/CheckForTopLevelClassMismatch

In addition, the com.pega.pegarules.generation.parseoverride bootstrap option is no longer supported. Remove this option from the system settings.

System state data is saved for 90 days

System state data is now saved to the database for 90 days and can be downloaded as a JSON file. Having previous system state data available is useful for debugging system problems. Operators with the pzSystemOperationsObserver privilege can download system state data from the Cluster Management landing page for either the entire cluster or a single node. In addition, the PersistClusterState and PersistNodeState agents have been added to the Pega-RulesEngine ruleset for persisting system state data to the database.

For more information, see Downloading the system state.

PegaDATA connection settings now required in the prconfig.xml file

If you use the default prconfig.xml file that is included with Pega^® Platform, and you have not removed the PegaDATA connection settings, no action is required. If you use a custom prconfig.xml file, for example, for running tests, ensure that the database connection settings for PegaDATA are not blank.

For more information about the connection settings, see PegaDATA connection settings in the prconfig.xml file.

Node classification replaces NodeID-based configuration

For simpler cluster administration and better application resiliency, Pega^® Platform is moving toward a node classification model. Although agents will continue to work by using NodeIDs for several upcoming releases, use node types instead of NodeID configuration for agents, listeners, and decisioning services for more efficient operations and upgrades.

For more information, see Node classification.

Improved security after hiding SQL values

In Pega Platform™ version 8.6, the default value of the showSQLInList dynamic system setting changes to FALSE, which suppresses the visibility of the SQL values in the Clipboard tool. With this setting disabled, when you run a report definition the clipboard does not display sensitive values in the pxSQLStatementPre and pxSQLStatementPost properties, which makes your system less vulnerable. If you want to display the values, in the .prconfig file, set the prconfig/security/showSQLInListPage/default to TRUE.

Additional connection pool parameters for JDBC URL external databases

For improved external JDBC URL database connection performance, Pega Platform™ now supports multiple Hikari connection pool parameters directly in the Data-Admin-DB-Name rule. Previously, Pega Platform supported a limited number of connection pool parameters to optimize your database connection using dynamic system settings (DSS). Now you can optimize your JDBC URL connection pool sizing to meet your traffic requirements through additional parameters without switching rules. Additional parameters include client-request parameters to maximize the connectivity to your external databases.

For more information, see Creating and updating external database instances with JDBC URLs.

Upgrade impact

During an upgrade to Pega Infinity™ release 8.6 and later, clients who previously specified their JDBC URL connection parameters through dynamic system settings (DSS) or prconfig file must delete the corresponding DSS or prconfig elements immediately after upgrade. The old parameters that you previously specified through DSS or the prconfig file override the equivalent parameters that you specified in the JDBC URL rule after your upgrade.

For more information about deleting your previous DSS or prconfig elements, see Deleting dynamic system setting connection parameters and Deleting connection parameters in the prconfig file.

Enhanced PEGA0104 alert

The PEGA0104 alert now includes the thread pool size, a list of activities that are waiting in the queue for a thread to become available, and details on how long it took to capture the thread dump.  By default, the alert also includes the thread dump.  You can disable the inclusion of the thread dump by changing the related configuration option. 

For more information, see PEGA0104 alert: Background tasks have exceeded a threshold time when attempting to acquire a thread from pool or executor.

New alert for job scheduler activity that exceeds a time threshold

Pega Platform™ now saves the PEGA0130 alert in the performance alert log at the time that a scheduled job exceeds the configured threshold value. To identify performance issues with long-running processes, you can monitor the log for the alert while the job scheduler runs.

The alert is enabled by default. You can change the default threshold value or disable the alert in dynamic system settings.

For more information, see PEGA0130 alert: Current Job Scheduler run is taking too long.