Published Release Notes

Manage data from different sources using data sets

Data sets define collections of records, allowing you to set up instances that make use of data abstraction to represent information stored in different sources and formats. This new rule type introduces the ability to manage data in database tables, decision data stores, and Visual Business Director data sources. Standard Interaction History and Adaptive Manager data sets manage interaction results and adaptive model data. The DataSet-Execute method supports data management operations on records that are defined by the data set. For more information on this new rule type, see About Data Set rules.

Data flow orchestration

Data flows provide a pattern-guided design experience to orchestrate, combine and sequence data based on a set of instructions from source to destination. You can run and manage data flows using the Data Flows landing page. For more information on this new rule type, see About Data Flow rules.

User interface distortions in the Predictive Analytics Director portal

By default, the New Application wizard configures new applications to include UI-Kit-7 in the list of application rulesets. This ruleset causes user interface distortions in the Predictive Analytics Director portal. Applications created in maintenance level updates previous to Pega 7.1.6, and applications that do not include the UI-Kit-7 dependency, are not impacted by this known issue.

Workaround:

1. Open the application record.
2. In Application Rulesets, remove UI-Kit-7.
3. Save the application record.

Noticeable differences between work objects created in the Decision Manager portal when compared to Designer Studio

In the Decision Manager portal, you create work objects by running flows in the enterprise application that serves as the base application for the application overlay. If the enterprise application does not include the UI-Kit-7 in its application rulesets, work objects can display differently in the Decision Manager portal when compared to Designer Studio because an application overlay is always configured to include the UI-Kit-7 ruleset.

Recommendation:

1. Add the UI-Kit-7 ruleset dependency to the enterprise application.
2. Redesign the user interface to comply with the UI-Kit-7 ruleset.

Rollback functionality is limited to latest revision

The rollback functionality in DSM Revision Manager allows customers to roll back the import of the latest revision to their DSM application. Only one rollback is allowed; after a rollback, the rollback option is disabled until the next revision is imported. If importing two (or more) revisions at once then attempting a rollback, the system only rolls back one revision.

Example: a user has a base DSM application. They import Revision 1, and then import Revision 2. Next, they try to roll back both revisions. The system reverts to the Revision 1 version of the application, and the customer cannot revert all the way back to the base application.

System Management Application displaying listeners that do not require any action

After installing or upgrading to Pega 7.1.7, there is an additional available listener (Data-Decision-DNode-Service:Default) that does not require any action. This listener can be safely ignored and you should not use the System Management Application to manage any of its operations or state.

• The Data-Decision-DNode-Service:Default listener is always running on every PRPC node.
• The state of this listener is internally managed by PRPC. Starting or stopping it through SMA does not have any effect on its state.

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.

Cannot create new data tables after update

Data tables have been replaced by a new local data storage format. You can upgrade old-style data tables to use the new local data storage format, but the new format is not compatible with earlier versions of Pega 7 in which data tables could be created.

You can still edit legacy data tables by using the old data table functionality. However, to create new data tables, you must use the Data Explorer and Data Designer.

Convert data instances into decision parameter rules

The Convert groups wizard is available in the Hierarchy landing page when the list of your propositions include decision data records.

Click Convert groups at the top of the landing page to use the wizard and to convert data instances into decision parameter rules. This conversion is necessary to make the existing proposition data instances available for revision management.

Update to the Data Flows rule

It is now possible to collect statistics for each active data flow. These include the number of processed records, records that caused errors and last processed records per shape, as well as historical throughput measured for the entire data flow.

There are two new patterns in the Data Flow rule:

• Event Strategy - define this pattern to use an event strategy in a data flow and to connect a data stream and static data sources to an event strategy.
• Filter - specify filter conditions and apply them to each element of the input flow 

Apart from this, the Merge pattern was updated to execute the flow when there is no data on the secondary branches and the Strategy pattern allows you to specify the class where you want to store your strategy results.