Published Release Notes

Use standard Developer portal

Customized versions of the Developer portal rely on legacy components and are not supported.

To avoid backwards compatibility issues, update your access group to point to the standard Developer portal prior to upgrade.

Top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless

Newly created top-level (named) pages may no longer be classless or have a blank pxObjClass property. This change can affect applications upgrading from versions prior to Pega 7 to the latest version, especially when:

• Application logic relies on a blank value in the pxObjClass property.
• An activity assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass in a Property-Set step.
• A data transform assumes a new top-level page is classless and explicitly sets pxObjClass using a Set action.

To avoid application failures, remove or update any logic that expects a blank pxObjClass. Where possible, use the new engine API that finds a page by both name and class:

findPageWithException(PageName, ClassName);

Activities and data transforms continue to create a top-level page when one does not exist. The class name is now derived from the Pages and Classes tab.

Upgrade changes system name

As of Pega 7.1.7, the following renaming behavior no longer occurs.

The upgrade process renames your system to “PRPC” and modifies any custom requestor rules in your application to use this name. After the upgrade completes, you must apply these changes to revert your system:

1. Identify all custom requestor rules (browser, batch, app, portal) with access groups that point to prior versions of PRPC.
2. Open the relevant access groups (for example, PRPC:Unauthenticated and PRPC:Agents) and update the name and version fields to point to the current PegaRULES application.
3. Reset your system name to its original value. You can set the Dynamic System Setting prconfig/identification/systemName/default or use the Designer Studio > System > Settings > System Name landing page.
4. Restart the system.

Required DB2 settings

For customers using the DB2 Version 4 drivers (“db2jcc4.jar”), it is necessary to set the custom connection property useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics to “false”.   

For customers using DB2 with WebSphere, the useJDBC4ColumnNameAndLabelSemantics property in the DB2 data source needs to be changed from a Boolean to an Integer and set to "2". 

IE8 limits expansion features

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) does not support CSS media queries, which are used by re-expansion features in the Designer Studio. IE8 users with low screen resolution (800 x 600) and a small window size may find that the explorer area in the Designer Studio collapses but cannot re-expand. 

As a work around, access the Designer Studio from another supported browser version and use the recommended, minimum screen resolution width of 1280 pixels.

Limited access for end user portals

The following portals are only accessible from supported versions of Internet Explorer in “quirks” mode:

• WorkUser
• WorkManager

Nesting dynamic containers not supported

Do not include a section containing a dynamic container inside of another dynamic container. This configuration may cause performance issues resulting in unexpected behavior at runtime, and is not supported.

All tabs are accessible on delegated rule forms

Delegates can now access all tabs in a delegated rule form.

You can continue to customize the development experience for delegated users, such as line managers, who may not require the full set of rule form options. For example, you can prevent users from adding new nodes on the Decision Tree form or using the expression builder on the Map Value form. All users, including delegated users, can remove these restrictions if they hold a rule-editing privilege.

For more details on this process and a list of commonly delegated rules, see How to delegate a rule.

Using Kerberos authentication with your database

Pega 7 supports Kerberos functionality. Kerberos is a computer network authentication protocol which allows nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. 

To use Kerberos for authentication, you must use the command line to install or upgrade Pega 7.

To use Kerberos authentication:

1.  Change the setupDatabase.properties file.

a.  In the “Uncomment this property section” of the file, uncomment the jdbc.custom.connection.properties property.  Based on your security infrastructure, different properties may be required as parameters to this property; provide the needed properties as semicolon-delimited name/value pairs:
 

jdbc.custom.connection.properties=prop1=val1;prop2=val2;prop3=val3;
 

Example:  For an installation on a MSSQL database server from a Windows client machine (where both machines belong to the same Windows domain), using the Microsoft JDBC driver, the property may be set as follows:
 

jdbc.custom.connection.properties=integratedSecurity=true;

b.  Comment out all the username and password properties where they occur in the jdbc.custom.connection.properties file, so that they appear as follows:

# pega.jdbc.username db username
# pega.jdbc.password db password

[lines removed here]

# pega.jdbc.username=ADMIN
# pega.jdbc.password=ADMIN

2.  Set up your database to enable Kerberos functionality.  This may include additional vendor-specific JDBC driver configuration, or other setup procedures.  Check the documentation from your database vendor to determine what Kerberos setup is needed for your database.

3.  Run the command line installation or upgrade by following the instructions found in the Pega 7 Deployment guides.

Run cleanup.bat/sh script only before upgrading

Prior to upgrading the rulebase, you can optionally run the cleanup.bat/sh script to remove older rules from the database.

Run this script before you upgrade your rulebase, or the script may delete needed rulesets. For more information about running the cleanup.bat/sh script, refer to the Upgrade Guide specific to your release version.