Published Release Notes

Cassandra 3.11.3 support for Pega Platform

Increase your system's reliability and reduce its memory footprint by upgrading the internal Cassandra database to version 3.11.3.

For on-premises Pega Platform™ users, after you upgrade to Pega 8.3, it is recommended that you manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3. You can upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3 on all operating systems except IBM AIX. If you do not want to upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, you can continue to use Cassandra 2.1.20, which is still supported.

For Pega Cloud Services 2.13 and later versions, Cassandra automatically upgrades to version 3.11.3 after your environment is upgraded to Pega Platform 8.3.

For information on how to manually upgrade to Cassandra 3.11.3, see the Pega Platform 8.3 Upgrade Guide for your server and database at Deploy Pega Platform.

Upgrade impact

After an on-premises Pega Platform upgrade, you still have the older version of Cassandra and must manually upgrade.

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

To upgrade Cassandra, you must create a prconfig setting or a dynamic system setting with the new Cassandra version and then do a rolling restart of all the Decision Data Store nodes to upgrade them to the latest version of Cassandra.

BIX ruleset is now included with Pega Platform

The Pega Business Intelligence Exchange™ (BIX) ruleset is now included with Pega Platform™, which eliminates the need for additional provisioning for Pega Cloud customers and for a separate BIX installation for on-premises customers. To add BIX to your application, add the Pega-BIX:<version> ruleset to your application rulesets.

For more information, see Data extraction.

Upgrade impact

After a successful upgrade, the BIX ruleset is available within Pega Platform. You should synchronize the BIX ruleset and Pega rules to avoid extraction errors.

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

After the upgrade is complete, change the ruleset version for Pega Platform and BIX to use the same, latest version.

Platform truststore for validating certificates

Pega Platform™ now includes a platform truststore, to which you can import X.509 certificates that are common across platform applications. When a certificate needs to be validated, Pega Platform looks for the certificate at the connector level, then in the platform truststore, and finally in the application server (JVM) truststore. You can add, update, and delete certificates in the platform truststore without having to restart the server, which is useful when TLS certificates are changed for reasons such as key rotation.

For more information, see Importing an X.509 certificate.

Service Portlet rules are deprecated

Service Portlet rules are deprecated. Existing rules will continue to work, but you cannot create new ones. Use Pega Web Mashup instead. In addition, some changes might impact functionality. If you are using Portlet rules and plan to upgrade, contact your customer service representative.

For more information about Pega Web Mashup, see About Pega Web Mashup.

Deprecated metadata types in the Connector and Metadata wizard

The WSDL, SAP WSDL, and DTD metadata types have been deprecated in the Connector and Metadata wizard. For WSDL, use SOAP integration, and for DTD, use XSD.

For more information about SOAP connectors, see About Connect SOAP rules. For more information about XSD, see About the Connector and Metadata wizard.

CyberArk password vault support added for Pega database

With the CyberArk password vault, you can store your systems' passwords in a secure, central location and retrieve them from that location instead of directly entering credentials into the systems. This support is available only for IBM WebSphere environments.

For more information, see Pega Platform deployment guides.

Pega Mobile Preview app

You can now use Pega Mobile Preview to access multiple mobile channels and preview your Pega Platform™ application, for example, to verify that it is displayed correctly and operates as intended. Pega Mobile Preview is a native application that runs on Android and iOS devices. Compared with Pega Mobile Express, it enables switching between mobile channels and supports enhanced layout configuration options.

You can download Pega Mobile Preview from the Apple App Store or from Google Play.

For more information, see Pega Mobile Express and Pega Mobile Preview.

Deprecated support for passing symbolic index as strings to value lists and page lists

Starting with the next release after Pega Platform™ 8.2, passing symbolic indexes as strings in parameters, properties, and string literals to both value lists and page lists will no longer be supported. The following examples show the syntax that still works in Pega 8.2, that will not work in the next release:

myPageList("<LAST>")

and

param.str = "<LAST>"
myPageList(param.str)

The following example shows syntax that currently is not supported and gives a validation error. This syntax will also not work in future releases.

param.str = <LAST>
myPageList(param.str)

To avoid issues after upgrading to Pega 8.3, refactor all occurrences of this syntax in your code. For instructions on how to find occurrences of this syntax in your code, see Refactoring unsupported symbolic index syntax for value lists and page lists.

For more information about the correct use of symbolic indexes, see Symbolic indexes – APPEND, CURRENT, INSERT, LAST, and PREPEND.

Attachment migration from Pega database storage to a repository

You can now migrate case attachments from Pega database storage to a repository by using a wizard from Pega Platform™. This ability is useful, for example, when you migrate from an on-premises deployment to a Pega Cloud Services environment and you want to reduce the size of your Pega database and manage all your case attachments in a single location.

For more information, see Migrating case attachments to a repository.

Enhanced Pega Infinity Mobile Client

With the new Pega Infinity Mobile Client™ you now can build online apps that launch quickly, provide instantaneous navigation, and immediately react to user input. Pega Infinity Mobile Client uses native components for faster navigation between the screens of your custom mobile app; every tab opens in a separate webview, which accelerates switching between the tabs. Pega Infinity Mobile Client protects your sensitive information through safe and convenient single sign-on authentication and additional locking mechanisms.

For more information, see Pega Mobility and mobile clients.