Published Release Notes

Custom database (DB) triggers are dropped during upgrade

The latest version of Pega 7 improves performance by no longer using database triggers to assist with System Pulse and Data-Rule-Summary processing, which is now done within the Pega 7 engine. As a result, DB triggers are no longer installed on either the pr_sys_updatescache or pr4_rule_vw tables.

When upgrading to the latest version of Pega 7, if you had previously implemented a custom database (DB) trigger on these tables, or a custom DB trigger that refers to these tables, it is removed during the upgrade process. No custom triggers are removed unless they reference these tables.

If you have custom DB triggers that reference the pr_sys_updatescache or pr4_rule_vw tables and perform other processing, those triggers must be reimplemented. When doing so, you must be careful to not modify the pr_sys_updatescache or pr4_rule_vw tables.

For more information, see Startup check removes custom DB triggers.

Identify, install, and manage hotfixes with the Hotfix Manager

Hotfixes are packages of files that address issues in Pega 7 and in participating Industry Applications. With Hotfix Manager, you can:

• Scan your system for installed and missing critical hotfixes and create a report that you can provide to Pegasystems Support for diagnostic purposes.
• Review the descriptions and contents of hotfixes.
• Install, rollback, and commit hotfixes.
• Manage hotfixes that include schema changes or require other special handling.

The Hotfix Manager replaces the Update Manager Hotfix Installer and System Scanner, both of which are deprecated. For more information, see Hotfix Manager identifies, installs, and manages hotfixes to Pega 7 and participating Industry Applications.

Enhanced product rule form for easy application packaging

The enhanced product rule form allows you to add applications in Delta mode, which includes only the patch version of the rulesets that comprise the application rule. You can also use Global exclusions to exclude one or more rules that are not associated with a ruleset version.

These enhancements allow easy packaging of non-versioned rules that are often deployed separately and reduce the need to manually add them later.

For more information, see Product rules - Completing the Contents tab.

Updated Rule-Utility-Function resolution

Rule-Utility-Function rules are now resolved based on ruleset.

Previously, if you had the same function @xyz() in different libraries in different rulesets, you could not call the function by using @xyz, because that would throw an exception.

The resolution process has since been updated so that rule resolution is now based on the highest ruleset in context. This update makes the function resolution process consistent with how rule resolution is performed for other rule types.

For more information, see Functions in expressions.

Define function input parameters on the Create or Save As forms

When creating or updating a Rule-Utility-Function ruleset in Designer Studio, use the Create or Save As forms to define or change parameters as a part of the form. The Parameters section on either of these forms allows you to set the function's name and Java type before opening the function.

Previously, you updated these fields on the Parameters tab for the function after the form was created. Moving these fields to the Create and Save As forms helps to proactively detect functions with the same signature in the same ruleset before saving the function.

For more information, see Defining function input parameters on the Create or Save As forms.

Support for Oracle TIMESTAMP data types

The Oracle TIMESTAMP data type is now fully supported throughout the Pega 7 data layer. The TIMESTAMP columns for data provide greater precision than the previously available DATE columns.

This release does not include any columns that use the TIMESTAMP data type at installation. However, after installation or upgrade:

• Any newly created columns (for example, those created when optimizing a property or defining a new table) use the TIMESTAMP column type.
• Any existing data still uses DATE values.
  • Oracle users can manually convert any existing DATE column types to use a TIMESTAMP column type instead.
  • Altering the column type for existing values in a column does not provide any greater precision for those values because they still use DATE values and not DATETIME values.

For more information, see DateTime property mapping in Oracle for Pega 7.

Updates to the Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) product

The Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) add-on has been updated with several new features. BIX 7.1.8 fully supports extraction of data from a Pega 7 multi-tenant instance. BIX can also now be run on Pega Cloud instances. Additionally, the new pxExtractDataWithArgs activity can be used by on-premises customers to schedule BIX runs by using Pega Platform agents.

For more information, see the BIX 7.1 User Guide.

Ability to periodically defragment the PR_SYS_LOCKS table

Lock management in Pega 7 is controlled through the database table PR_SYS_LOCKS. Because of the high volume of entries inserted into and deleted from this table during case processing, the data in the PR_SYS_LOCKS table can become highly fragmented, causing degraded performance over time.

You can now periodically defragment this table. The following Dynamic System Settings control when and how often defragmentation takes place using DefragSysLocksDaemon:

• syslocks/defragIntervalType

  • ​Custom interval type to run defragmentation

  • Set this first – determines whether defragmentation occurs daily at a specified hour or at a recurring interval

• ​syslocks/defragHourOfDay
  • ​​Used to run defragmentation at a specified hour
  • Accepts only integer values in the range 0-23
  • Example: run defragmentation daily at 1 AM by entering a value of "1"

  • Can be ignored if syslocks/defragIntervalType indicates a a specified periodic interval

• syslocks/defragIntervalInHours
  • Used to run defragmentation at specified periodic intervals
  • Accepts only integer values > 0

  • Example: run defragmentation every four hours by entering a value of "4"

  • Can be ignored if syslocks/defragIntervalType indicates a specified hour

For more information, see PEGA0056 alert monitors PR_SYS_LOCKS defragmentation performance.

Optimized Storage Stream for reduced BLOB size

All clipboard pages are serialized and are stored in BLOB columns named pzPVStream in the Pega 7 database. The Storage Stream (byte stream) that is stored in these BLOB columns has been optimized to make the BLOB values smaller, and to also make the encoding and reading of these values faster when opening and saving objects.

This update was completed by reducing redundancies in the stored data, redesigning the data structure to be more space efficient, and by selectively encoding only parts of the stream, instead of encoding the entire stream on each read.

For more information, see the help topic Storage Stream.

Custom PL/Java Modules for PostgreSQL 9.3

To install Pega 7 for PostgreSQL 9.3, you must first install the version of PL/Java included in your resource kit. Follow the installation instructions located in:

<Pega 7 installation directory>\ResourceKit\ResourceKitREADME.txt.

Note that if you do not install PL/Java before you attempt to install Pega 7, then the Pega 7 installation fails.