Published Release Notes

New Schema Tools and Query Inspector landing pages for Pega Cloud

Two landing pages have been added for advanced database administration tasks for Pega Cloud customers who use a Pega-hosted instance. These landing pages minimize the operations that need to be performed outside of the Pega 7 Platform. They are available only for customers who use a Postgres database.

From the new Schema Tools landing page, you can view PegaRULES and PegaDATA database schemas, increase the size of a column, add a composite or function index, update database statistics for a table, and defragment a table.

From the new Query Inspector landing page, you can enter an SQL query and generate an explain plan.

To use these landing pages, you must have the new PegaRULES:DatabaseAdministrator role. You access the landing pages by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Schema Tools or by clicking Designer Studio > System > Database > Query Inspector. The individual features that you can access are determined by the privileges that are assigned to you.

For more information, see Schema Tools and Query Inspector landing pages for tuning and maintaining databases in the Pega Cloud.

Custom properties can be passed to an Oracle database

You can pass a customizable set of property values to an Oracle database when a connection is established so that an SQL statement can be run. This feature provides the ability to implement object-level security for data access from a Pega 7 Platform application by defining Virtual Private Databases (VPDs) on class tables that reference the information passed. For example, you could pass in an operator's branch office into the context of every query run against the Oracle database to ensure that the operator has access only to data that is applicable to the operator's branch.

This feature is available only for Oracle databases and for a Data-Admin-DB-Name instance that is not PegaRULES or PegaDATA, and has the same connection metadata (JNDI, URL) as PegaData.

See Passing custom properties to an Oracle database.

The Declarative Network display is now cross-browser compatible

The Declarative Network display can now be displayed on all browsers.

BIX extracts can be scheduled and run from the Pega 7 Platform by using agents

You can create an agent that periodically invokes the new pxExtractDataWithArgs activity to run a BIX Extract rule. The activity takes the class and extract rule name, as well as an additional input string with a list of BIX command-line parameters, as input parameters to use for the run.

Discontinued support for list view and summary view rules

The list view rule and the summary view rule are deprecated, and support for these rules has been discontinued. Existing list view and summary view reports will continue to work on supported browsers. However, the last version of Internet Explorer that list view and summary view rules support is Internet Explorer 11.

You cannot create new list view or summary view reports. Instead, create list reports and summarized reports by using the report definition rule. To prevent display issues, re-create the custom list view and summary view reports that you need as report definition reports.

Chrome support for editing specification descriptions in Word

If you use Google Chrome 42 and later, you can now create, save, and update specification descriptions even if you are not using the Microsoft Silverlight NPAPI plug-in.

The new Upload Word document as description option provides you with the functionality to upload a Word document that contains the specification description. In addition, you can use the Export to Word option to export the description that you entered in the rich text editor to a Word document.

Accessibility improvements

Several improvements are now available that enable application accessibility. These improvements affect the wait indicator, overlays, and collapsible layouts.

The wait indicator, or throbber, announces its status to an assistive technology such as JAWS.

• When loading, the throbber announces “Loading content” or other text that can be edited in the pyThrobberLoadingText property.
• When loading is completed, the throbber announces “Loading completed” or other text that can be edited in the pyThrobberLoadingCompletedText property.
• The loading announcement is set by default to a three-second delay, which can be modified in the pyThrobberAnnouncementDelay property.

Overlays are announced by an assistive technology and overlay content can be tabbed through by using the Tab key without closing the overlay. Overlays can be closed by pressing the Esc key. This behavior applies to all overlays and modal dialog boxes that are opened as local actions and popovers that are part of the autogenerated UI.

All users, including those not using an assistive technology, can focus the expand and collapse feature of a layout by using the Tab key. The expanded or collapsed state is announced by screen readers.

Date control for past and future years

The Date control can be configured to show only past dates, only future dates, or any date range that includes the current year. The Display range can be set to include a configurable range of previous years or next years. The number of years is relative to the user’s date.

Enabling run-time edit in Live UI

When you inspect a rule with the Live UI tool, you can enable editing if editing has not yet been enabled for the application. The Enable live editing link at the top of the property panel adds a run-time edit branch to the current application's definition. A similar option is available when you add or move elements by using Live UI.

Pega 7 Platform supports X-Forwarded-* (XF*) HTTP headers

When deployed behind a load balancer, the Pega 7 Platform can formulate absolute URLs while responding to requests, without any additional configuration. The load balancer must be configured to use XF* headers. Consequently, the configuration property contextrewriteenabled is deprecated.