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Date circumstance rule

Updated on April 26, 2021

A date circumstance rule is a circumstance that is only resolved during a specified range of time.

When a date circumstance is applied, the value of the date property and the specified start and end date determine the time period during which the rule will be active.

Restrictions

  • Date circumstances can only be created for supported rule types. This is controlled by the Allow rules that are valid only for a certain period of time check box on the Class form.
  • You cannot override a final rule with a date circumstance rule.
  • When date circumstance rules are used in a multinode system, be sure to synchronize the internal clocks of all the server nodes in the cluster. Clock differences of less than a few seconds may lead to incorrect application results. Most operating systems offer facilities for such synchronization.

Using more than one time-qualified rule

Your application can include multiple date range circumstances for the same base rule with overlapping (but not identical) date and time intervals. At run-time, rule resolution processing finds all the time-qualified rules with an interval that includes the current date and time. It then selects the best rule to run based on the following tests:

  1. Examine the end dates on each candidate time-qualified rule. Choose the rule or rules that have the nearest end date, discarding others.
  2. If only one candidate remains, that rule is the result of this phase of rule resolution processing.
  3. If two or more candidates remain, the one with the most recent start date is selected.

Contrasting time-qualified rules and historical processing

Pega Platform offers two separate features that can cause processing to be dependent on a date or time value. Which of these to apply to best meet an application need depends on the nature of the rules affected and the requirements and environment of the application:

  • Date circumstance rules
  • Historical processing capability

How circumstance rules evaluate time

Date circumstance rules are specialized versions of a base rule that only execute when certain time conditions are met.

Based on the combination of specified date property and the time interval, a rule can be resolved in one of the following ways:

ResultDate propertyStart DateEnd Date
Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs within a date rangeSelectSelectSelect
Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs after a certain dateSelectSelect
Rule to be effective only within a date rangeSelectSelect
Rule to be effective only after a certain dateSelect

How historical processing evaluates time

The historical processing capability applies to an entire ruleset version, not to a rule. This capability is unrelated to the concept of circumstancing and base rules.

With careful advanced design, this feature allows an application (for the current requestor) to operate according to rules as they were on a specific past date. Such processing is useful to reconstruct past behavior or apply past policies.

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