Published Release Notes

End of support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and quirks mode applications in Pega 7.1.9

In accordance with Microsoft’s announcement to discontinue support for Internet Explorer 8 in January 2016, Pega 7.1.9 does not support Internet Explorer 8, nor does it support non-HTML5 standard user interfaces.

You must upgrade to Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 or later or use Google Chrome, Apple Safari, or Mozilla Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer 9 or later, you must turn off compatibility mode by accessing the Compatibility View settings.

Note the following:

• Pega 7.1.9 does not support user interface rules that are not based on HTML5 standards (rules in quirks mode).
• If you use applications that are rendered in quirks mode, which enables Pega 7 to correctly display and render non-HTML5 standard user interfaces, you must update them to standards-based HTML5 user interfaces when you upgrade to Pega 7.1.9 or later. Pega 7 provides automated tools to help you migrate your applications.
• Pegasystems Global Customer Support will not investigate or fix any Pega 7.1.9 bugs or support requests that are exclusive to Internet Explorer 8 or quirks mode user interfaces.

You can quickly identify which components of your application user interface are not HTML5 standards-based by clicking Designer Studio > User Interface > HTML5 Application Readiness.

Upgrading to Pega 7.1.9 and a newer browser offers the following benefits:

• These browsers are HTML5 and CSS3 compliant.
• New features are supported and existing features work as intended.
• The Pega 7 Platform user interface is displayed and rendered as intended.
• Browser security is enhanced.

If you have additional questions about browser support, see the Platform Support Guide or contact Pegasystems Global Customer Support.

Real-time pulse processing for multinode systems

Multinode development environments now use real-time pulse processing. Previously, when a change was made on one node, the pulse processing interval could take a minute or more for that change to be reflected on another node. Now, when a rule is changed on one node, that change is immediately reflected on all the other nodes in the cluster. This change helps to ensure that users are running a rule on the same node as where the rule was changed.

Verifying that a Pega 7 Platform instance is running

You can verify whether a Pega 7 Platform instance is up and running by entering this URL: http://<<hostName:port/contextName>>/PRRestService/monitor/pingservice/ping

The Pega 7 Platform Engine responds with HTTP Response Code 200 if the instance is available. The response contains JSON text in the format { "duration":"<time in milliseconds>" }. Any other response codes or timeout indicate that the instance is unavailable.

Updated default system pulse processing settings

The default settings for system pulse processing have been updated in this release.

Upgrades to Pega 7.1.9 from a previous version of the Pega 7 Platform use database pulse by default. Database pulse synchronizes rule changes at a periodic interval across all nodes in a system.

New installations of Pega 7.1.9 use cluster-based pulse by default. Cluster-based pulse immediately updates rule changes across all nodes in a system after the changes are saved.

You can change the database pulse setting to the cluster-based pulse setting by updating the value attribute for initialization/pulse/transport to "cluster" in the prconfig.xml file or in the Dynamic System Settings. Changing from database pulse to cluster-based pulse requires a full cluster restart after the changes are made.

For more information, see Pega-RULES agents.

Database storage used for passivation in High Availability mode

When an application is running in High Availability mode, the value attribute for initialization/​persistrequestor/storage in the prconfig.xml file or the Dynamic System Settings​ now defaults to "database."

Previously, applications running in High Availability mode required shared passivation, where either initialization/​persistrequestor/storage was set to “OnTimeout” or a custom passivation mechanism was used. The change to using database by default provides persistent storage for passivation, and provides control for the landing page for High Availability.

For more information, see Understanding passivation and requestor timeouts and the High Availability Administration Guide.

PegaDISTRIBUTION Manager (PDM) is no longer available

The PegaDISTRIBUTION Manager (PDM) is no longer available in the Pega 7 Platform. The related PDN articles and help topics have been archived.

Batch database processing improvements

Batch database processing has been enhanced to ensure that a constraint violation does not occur when you save transactions to a table with a foreign key dependency. Because batch processing changes the order of save operations, it is disabled for transactions with foreign key dependencies. Disabling batch processing ensures that a record with a foreign key dependency on another record will not be written before the record on which it is dependent.

For more information about how batch database processing works and how to enable and disable it, see Batch processing during database write operations.

Improve cluster security by limiting concurrent operator sessions

You can increase the security of a Pega^® Platform cluster by limiting the number of concurrent sessions allowed for each operator. Because operators typically do not require multiple concurrent sessions for performing their work, limiting the number of sessions reduces the chance that an unknown or untrusted person could access systems in the cluster. Use the new setting Number of concurrent sessions allowed for each operator on the Production tab of the System Data Instance form to configure the number of concurrent sessions for operators. You must restart your system when you change this setting. You can also create a list of operators by using the presence/maxsessions/operators/whitelist Dynamic System Setting, to which the maximum number of concurrent sessions setting will not apply.

For more information, see System form - Completing the Production tab.

New System Queue Management landing page

You can manage your system queues from the new System Queue Management landing page. You can use this landing page to quickly and efficiently debug applications without exiting Designer Studio. In addition to viewing items in a queue, you can defer, remove, and requeue items in a queue, stop items in progress, and view an item's XML.

As a result of this enhancement, the Broken Queue landing page has been removed.

For more information, see System Queue Management landing page.

Data encryption across search nodes

You can now encrypt communication among search nodes. Encryption secures the data that is transferred across nodes so that it cannot be accessed by unauthorized hosts. Encryption is enabled by default for new installations and upgrades from Pega^® 7.1.6 or earlier to Pega 7.3. Encryption is not enabled by default for upgrades from Pega 7.1.7 or later to Pega 7.3. You can enable and disable search encryption from the Search landing page or by using the indexing/distributed/enable_inter_node_encryption Dynamic System Setting.

For more information, see Enabling and disabling encryption for communication among search nodes.