Published Release Notes

Deprecation of EAR deployments in Pega Platform 8.6

Starting with Pega Platform 8.6, EAR deployments of Pega Platform are deprecated. In the upcoming 8.7 release, EAR deployments will not be supported. The following rules that require EAR deployments will also be deprecated and no longer supported in Pega Platform 8.7:

• Connect EJB
• Connect JCA
• JCA Resource Adapter
• JMS MDB Listener
• Service EJB

With this deprecation, you can use the latest tools and keep your application up to date. 

Upgrade impact

In Pega Platform 8.6, you can still create rules that require EAR deployments and update existing rules. However, after an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.7, rules that require EAR deployments are no longer supported.

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

To prepare your application for this change well in advance of the Pega Platform 8.7 release, see the following table for a list of alternative rules and for guidance on modernizing your application.

For information on the supported platforms that are affected by this deprecation, see Pega Platform 8.6 Support Guide.

Legacy Parse XML rule configurations must be upgraded to edit them

If your application has Parse XML rules that use the legacy configuration from Pega Platform™ 5.x, you cannot edit these rules after you upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6 until after you upgrade them to use tree-based parse rule configuration.

You must upgrade a Parse XML rule that you want to edit if it shows the following warning when you open it in Dev Studio.

This type of Parse XML rule is deprecated. An upgrade should be performed.

An option to upgrade also displays below the message.

Upgrade impact

Parse XML rules with the legacy configuration do not map data to the clipboard, and the rule definition is empty. After you upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6, you cannot edit Parse XML rules that you created in Pega Platform 5.x or earlier until you upgrade them to use tree-based parse rule configuration.

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

Update legacy Parse XML rules to use tree-based parse rule configuration before you edit them in Pega Platform 8.6. Using tree-based parse rules is considered a best practice.

1. Open the legacy Parse XML rule.
2. On the Mapping tab, click Upgrade.
   Result: The Allow tree editing? check box is displayed and is automatically selected. You can add attributes and elements to the tree structure, or delete them.
3. Save the upgraded rule configuration.

For more information, see Parse XML rules.

Connect MQ rules configured with alias queue do not work after upgrade

Connect MQ rules that you defined with an alias queue in earlier versions of Pega Platform do not work after an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6.

Upgrade impact

If you defined an alias queue in Connect MQ rules, after an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.6, those Connect MQ rules do not work.

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

In the Pega-IntegrationEngine ruleset, create the following dynamic system settings and their default values:

• "mq/pmo" = 0
• "mq/gmo" = 0
• "mq/oo_request" = 1040
• "mq/oo_response" = 16

For more information, see Creating a dynamic system setting.

Interact with cases from external applications

You can now achieve API case integration by using the Integration case-wide property to generate code that allows you to interact with cases from external applications. The Generate create case microservice code option for microservice APIs automatically generates code that is specific to your case type. This option complements the Generate mashup code option, which generates code that you can use to embed Pega 7 Platform content in another application's web page.

Connect to external REST APIs by using OAuth 2.0

You can now connect to external REST services that are provided by web applications, such as Twitter and Facebook, by using the OAuth 2.0 protocol client credentials grant. Your Pega 7 Platform application acts as an OAuth 2.0 client to access protected API resources. For example, you can connect to Twitter by using OAuth 2.0 to obtain a collection of tweets that match a specific query.

For more information, see Accessing protected API resources by using OAuth 2.0.

Access REST services and APIs by using OAuth 2.0

You can now allow external client applications to access REST services on your behalf by using the OAuth 2.0 protocol client credentials grant. The Pega 7 Platform acts as an OAuth 2.0 provider to grant trusted applications access to functions in Pega 7 Platform applications. Additionally, you can provide access to the Pega API by using OAuth 2.0.

View external data entities in one location

The External Data Entities landing page provides a consolidated view of all the existing data entities in your product. You can access this page by clicking Designer Studio > Data Model > View external data entities. Use this landing page to identify the data sources that are readily available to use and the sources that need to be replaced with production data sources.

Enhanced data modeling

You can now create data types quickly in the Pega 7 Platform and in Pega Express. Use the enhanced Data Designer user interface to define the data model for your data types. More field types have been added, and they are categorized as simple, fancy, and complex to meet your data modeling needs.

For more information, see Data Designer enhancements.

Updates to the Authentication Profile rule form

You can now create OAuth 2.0 authentication profiles by using the enhanced rule form. For this profile type, you can select an OAuth 2.0 Provider data instance, a grant type, and the client information that you obtained from your OAuth 2.0 provider, such as Box or Facebook. You can also revoke issued access tokens on this rule form.

For more information, see Access protected API resources by using OAuth 2.0.

Authorization code grant for OAuth 2.0 providers

You can now connect to OAuth 2.0-protected APIs by selecting the authorization code grant type on the OAuth 2.0 Provider rule form. Enter the authorization code, access token, and revoke token endpoints as indicated by your OAuth 2.0 provider, for example, Box or Facebook.

For more information, see Access protected API resources by using OAuth 2.0.