Published Release Notes

View application quality metrics by data type

You can now view application quality metrics by data type on the Application Quality landing page. The new Data Types tab displays metrics for data types grouped by data objects, which enables you to more quickly understand the overall coverage of the application's integrations and interfaces.

For more information about data type metrics, see Application Quality landing page.

Automatically generate OpenAPI Specification documentation for application REST APIs

You can now access a clear, standard view of all the REST APIs in your application by using autogenerated OpenAPI Specification (OAS) documentation. In App Studio, you can view the OAS documentation generated for application-specific REST APIs by using the new Application tab in the API channel. Additionally, service package rules now include an OpenAPI tab where you can view the automatically generated OAS documentation for all the REST services included in the service package. With these enhancements, you can easily find, visualize, and test the REST APIs in your application.

For more information, see Generating OpenAPI Specification documentation for application-specific REST APIs.

PegaWAI ruleset deprecated in 8.5

Accessibility functions that were contained in the PegaWAI ruleset are now integrated into the main Pega Platform™. Consequently, the user interface in your applications now features accessibility functions out of the box, so you no longer need to use the PegaWAI ruleset to ensure accessible behavior in your application.

For more information, see Building an accessible UI.

Faster starting offline-enabled mobile apps

Pega Platform™ and Pega Infinity Mobile Client™ now support access group data prepackaging when you build the executable files for an offline-enabled mobile app. This shortens the time needed to start a mobile app for the first time, because only the data that differs between the package and the current server state is synchronized. The data that is prepackaged comes from the access group cache, and you can decide what access group cache data should be excluded or additionally included in the package.

For more information, see Enabling access group data prepackaging during build.

Mashup code preview in App Studio

When you create a mashup channel for your application, you can now eliminate issues with the code and create better looking applications, by using the portal preview in App Studio. You can preview a channel to verify that different types of devices correctly display the mashup code. The preview functionality uses a default wrapper that functions as a portal for displaying a frame with the mashup code. You can modify the appearance of the default wrapper, and adapt the mashup user interface in design mode to meet your requirements.

For more information, see Configuring the Mashup channel and Previewing an application.

Test coverage support for more rule types

Test coverage has been expanded to include the following rule types. Test coverage support for these rule types enables developers to more accurately measure the effectiveness of their tests.

• Collection
• Declare trigger
• Map value
• Navigation 
• Report definition
• Scorecard

For more information about test coverage, see Test coverage.

Upgrade impact

The new rule types may impact the test coverage metrics for your applications. Due to the increased number of supported rules, the reported test coverage percentage will decrease.

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

Run your coverage reports after upgrading to see the latest metrics.

Elasticsearch reports support string comparison operators

To improve performance, reports that use string comparison operators in filters can now run queries against Elasticsearch instead of querying the database. The following operators are now supported for Elasticsearch queries.

• Starts with, Ends with, Does not start with, and Does not end with
• Contains and Does not contain
• Greater than, Less than, Greater than or equal, and Less than or equal

In cases where a query cannot be run against Elasticsearch, the query is run against the database, for example, if the query includes a join. To determine if a query was run against Elasticsearch, use the Tracer and enable the Query resolution event type. For more information, see Tracer event types to trace.

Data flow life cycle monitoring

You can now generate a report from the Run details section of a Data Flow rule that provides information about run events. The report includes reasons for specific events which you can analyze to troubleshoot and debug issues more quickly. You can export the report and share it with others, such as Global Customer Support.

For more information about accessing event details, see Creating a real-time run for data flows and Creating a batch run for data flows.

Support for application-specific REST API calls

You can now call an authenticated REST API in the context of any application that is listed on an operator record by using the application alias URL. With the application alias URL, you can also develop REST services without changing the access group in the service package. REST services run in the context of the access group that points to the provided application, instead of the access group that is specified in the service package.

For more information, see Invoking a REST service rule.

Tamper-proof Pega Web Mashup loading

To protect your application from hackers, Pega Web Mashup is now loaded in a more secure way. The system generates a channel ID in the mashup code for validation on the server, before passing the mashup request. 

For more information, see Creating a mashup.

Upgrade impact

After an upgrade to Pega Platform 8.5, existing mashups, which do not have the channel ID parameter in their code, cannot load and users see the access control warning.

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

If you need to maintain full availability of the mashup during the upgrade of the production environment, perform the steps in Migrating existing mashups.