Published Release Notes

REST APIs for system management

New REST APIs are available for reports, agent management, requestor management, cache management, queue processing, and node management. Call these APIs to troubleshoot issues, or perform administrative functions in Cloud applications.

For more information, see Pega API.

Import only new instances of specific classes

To bypass updates for specific classes and only import new instances of those types, edit the product rule definition.  For more information, see Specifying product rule deployment options.

Create configurable node types with purpose-specific names

To meet your specific business needs, you can now configure your own node types that you can segregate by purpose, and also define their behavior. Pega Platform™ supports node types that you can associate with multiple resources, like agents or job schedulers. For ease of use, apply meaningful names to your node types.

For more information, see Node classification, Creating configurable node types.

New roles required for system management features and APIs after upgrade

The pzSystemOperationsObserver and pzSystemOperationsAdministator privileges are no longer used for accessing system management features in Admin Studio and for system management APIs. Pega Platform™ has new privileges for individual system management functions and new roles configured with these privileges. Use the following roles to access system management features and APIs:

• PegaRULES:SysOpsAdministrator – has all administrator and observer privileges
• PegaRULES:SysOpsObserver – has all observer privileges
• PegaRULES:SysAdm4 – has all administrator and observer privileges

After upgrading, you can include one or more of these roles in your access group or create a custom role. For more information about access roles, see Access roles.

Enabling access to upgraded help

After upgrading to Pega Platform ™ 8.1, the default URL to the upgraded help files might be incorrect. To enable access to the latest help files, reset the URL:

1. In the header of Dev Studio, click Configure > System > Settings > URLs.
2. Enter the Online Help URL:

   https://community.pega.com/sites/default/files/help_v81/

3. Click Save.
4. Log out and log back into Pega Platform.

Rules can no longer access Pega internal Java packages

You can no longer create rules that access Java packages that reference internal APIs (syntax com.pega.platform.*.internal*). This change does not affect rules that access Pega public API packages.

If you encounter issues when running existing rules that reference internal Pega APIs, contact Pega Support.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to 8.4 and later, clients can no longer save new or modified rules that access Pega internal APIs; existing rules that reference internal APIs can still be run but cannot be modified. 

What steps are required to update the application to be compatible with this change?

Following a software upgrade to 8.4 or later, clients can refactor existing rules into guardrail compliant rules. To find rules to refactor, run the validation tool from designer studio (Application > Tools > Validation) to identify what rules fail validation; failed rules that include the message "Test compilation failed : Illegal internal class reference : com.pega.internal.XYZ" can updated to reference appropriate APIs.

Client-server deployment of Hazelcast

Pega Platform™ now supports the client-server model for the Hazelcast service, which provides cluster communication and distributes Pega Platform features across nodes. This optional deployment model introduces independent scalability for both servers and clients in Pega Platform, improving stability for deployments that use a large number of nodes.

The Hazelcast client-server model is intended for select environments running Pega Platform 8.4 across a large number of nodes and should be deployed only when directed by Global Client Support.

WSDL generation error prevents invocation of SOAP services

Status

A Known Issue was introduced in the 8.4.2 Pega Platform patch release, which impacts both upgrades and new installations of that version.

Description

Due to changes introduced in the SOAP functionality for the case-mismatch error in SR-D98509/INC-119725, the WSDL is being generated for SOAP services with an incorrectly-capitalized element, which prevents the service from being invoked.  The element should be “name” instead of “Name”.

Workaround

Clients must perform the following workaround after they define a new SOAP connector in Pega Platform:

1. To download the WSDL from Pega Platform:
   1. After using the SOAP Wizard (Dev Studio > Configure > Integration > Services > Service Wizard) the WSDL URL is shown at the bottom right of the Dev Studio screen.
   2. Click the URL to display the XML.
   3. Save the WSDL file to your local system.
2. In the text editor of your choice, modify "Name" to "name" in every <element “name” = … > tag in the WDSL.
3. Save your changes to the local file.
4. To reload the WSDL into Pega Platform:
   1. In Dev Studio, open the Configure menu.
   2. Select Integration > Connectors > Create SOAP Integration.
   3. In the New SOAP integration wizard, select Upload WSDL from File.
   4. Complete the upload using the wizard prompts.

This is a design-time issue, not a run-time issue; therefore, clients only have to perform this workaround process once. Existing SOAP services should not be impacted; however, if clients modify an existing SOAP service definition by re-running the wizard, clients must reapply the workaround for Pega Platform to recognize the SOAP definition changes.  

Resolution

This issue will be addressed in the Pega Platform Patch Release 8.4.3.  Clients who upgrade to that version or later should not see this issue.

Improved indexing performance by gradual retrieval of data

Search functionality in Pega Platform™ versions from 8.4.5 to 8.6 now includes the option to improve indexing performance when reading query results from a large table in a database. For example, to load the recommended 50 records at a time, in the Pega-SearchEngine ruleset, create the indexing/distributed/fetchsize dynamic system setting, and set the value to 50.

Creating the fetchsize dynamic system setting ensures that your system does not crash while indexing classes with numerous instances.

For more information, see Creating a dynamic system setting.