Published Release Notes

Integration

Critical customer-driven product improvements were made to SOAP services, SOAP connectors and connector wizard, CMIS connectors, and the Pega Image Viewer. These fixes addressed a handful of functionality gaps discovered in PRPC 7.1 and earlier releases by internal and external customers.

• A Connect-CMIS instance which was created using a reference to an ATOM Server Instance may now use Global Resource Settings.
• The Execute Synchronously (one-way operation) has been enhanced for SOAP Services.
• The Silverlight version of PegaImageViewer has been enhanced to print ranges of multiple pages at once.
• The SOAP Wizard has been improved to show all the ports which are available in the WSDL file.
• Two way SSL has been enhanced for the Connect-REST rule.

Data Management

Improvements to data handling were made for the Data Pages, autopopulate properties, and reference properties.  Lightweight lists were optimized.

• Property references are now maintained on the Work Page.
• PageList properties can reference a Data Page.
• Auto-populate properties can be used in a seciton to show results from a Data Page.
• Data Pages can run in “Page” mode as well as “List” mode
• The "Rules Not Using Lightweight List" report was enhanced.
• A PageList property that references a Data Page may be used to populate a grid.
• Related autopopulated properties can now be referenced.

Integration

Usability enhancements have been made to the integration wizards. The REST end-point integration has been improved, and XML parsing functionality has been enhanced.

• PRPC services can return Report or Listview data as XML.
• Work items may now be processed when accessing from a link in system-created emails.
• An SMTP outage will not cause an application to stop working.
• File listener will now read files using a leading asterisk (*).
• XML Parse rule will handle schema validation.
• PegaImageViewer will now work with Version 7.1.
• Security measures are enhanced for SOAP connections to web services.
• After generating rules using REST wizard, the Undo Generation button will delete all the generated rules.
• Email wizard has been improved.

Derby databases are no longer supported

Previously, an embedded Derby database could be used as a file system. This setup was configured by setting storage/class/<<filesystem>>/type to "embedded" in the prconfig file.

After upgrading, storage types that are specified as "embedded" now default to the local file system.

Service responses in HTTP and REST connectors are no longer modified

The Pega 7.1.8 release correctly leaves form service responses for HTTP and REST connectors unmodified. Upgrade to this release if you experience a problem in Pega 7.1.7 where service responses for HTTP and REST connectors are modified when the declared type in the Content-Type header is application/x-www-form-urlencoded. In this case, the responses were modified to a base 64 representation of the bytes in the string. In Pega 7.1.8, responses of type application/x-www-form-urlencoded are mapped to the property designated on the Connector record.

Configuration required for data operations on external schema when using a Postgres database

When you use the API for data operations on external schema in the Postgres database, you must update the prconfig.xml file. No other platform requires a prconfig.xml update.

To update the prconfig.xml file:

1. Stop the server and add the following entry to the prconfig.xml file:
   env name="database/databases/postgres_ext/defaultSchema"
   value="externalschema"
   where postgres_ext is the external database that uses the external schema “externalschema”.
2. Restart the server.

IMAGE data type replaced by varbinary(max) in SQLServer

Because Microsoft is discontinuing support for the IMAGE data type, the Pega 7 Platform now supports the varbinary(max) data type, which will replace the IMAGE data type. All new columns in existing tables and all new tables will use the varbinary(max) data type instead of the IMAGE data type, and IMAGE columns will be automatically converted to varbinary(max).

Atom Server and SOAP Server rule forms are deprecated

The Atom Server and SOAP Server rule forms are deprecated. Use the Connect CMIS rule form instead.

Existing rules that were created with the deprecated forms still work, but you cannot create new ones.

Pega File Listener process changes

Beginning with Pega 7.2.2, File Listener processes files in a different way:

• File movement in directories – Previously, files were processed from the Work directory. In Pega 7.2.2, files are processed from the source location. Files move to the Work directory only if the initial processing fails and Recovery is disabled.
• New file processing – Previously, File Listener would process all files in the source location, even if the files were added during the processing. In Pega 7.2.2, files added to the source location during processing are read the next time the File Listener starts.

For more information, see File Listener data instances.

Functionality of the pyInvokeRESTConnector rule and the pxDeferenceEndpoint rule moved to core engine

The functionality of the pyInvokeRESTConnector rule and the pxDeferenceEndpoint rule has been moved into the core engine code of the Pega 7 Platform. This change provides more consistent behavior, reduces maintenance, and reduces the risk of regression issues. As a result, you can no longer customize these rules, and upgrading the Pega 7 Platform requires special considerations if you previously customized these rules.

For more information, see Upgrading with customized pyInvokeRESTConnector and pxDeferenceEndpoint rules.