About the Modify Schema wizard

Access the Modify Schema wizard by selecting the > System > Database > Modify Schema menu item.

Basics

This wizard allows you to view, and in some cases modify, the schema of the PegaRULES database. When viewing the database, you can determine:

• Which concrete classes are mapped to each database table
• Which properties in each class are exposed as distinct columns
• Which Single Value properties in each class are not exposed but are contained in the Storage Stream (BLOB) column

With appropriate database account and password, you can also use this wizard to copy a Single Value property from the Storage Stream and expose it as a column.

Notes

Changes to expose additional properties as columns require planning and care:

• To expose one or a few Single Value, top-level property and populate values in a development system, consider the Property Optimization tool as an alternative to the Modify Schema wizard.
• Only database administrators who are familiar with SQL, DDL, and database schemas are qualified to make changes to the schema to expose additional properties.
• In most cases, changes made to a table structure in a development or test system must also be made to the similar table in a production system.
• Exposing additional columns may affect the performance and tablespace requirements of the database. Column populator operations may require minutes or hours to complete. Perform column populator processing at a time when rows of the affected table are not locked by other Pega 7 users (so no add, delete, or update operations occur during this process).
• If, in the Storage Stream (BLOB) column, the selected property or properties has non-blank values for at least some rows, you must extract (copy) the existing values into the new column. Use the Column Populator utility. See Working with the PegaRULES database — Using the Column Populator utility.
• To expose a property, obtain a database account and password that allows such database restructuring (SQL ALTER TABLE grant). The database account password used for normal Pega 7 operations may lack this capability. If so, you can explore, but not update, the schema with this tool.
• As an alternative to immediate alteration of the database, the Modify Schema tool can generate an SQL statement (as a text file) to be applied later.
• In a multinode cluster, new database columns are not visible on nodes other than the node that was used to expose the column, until the node is stopped and restarted. To make the new column visible simultaneously on all nodes, stop and restart the entire system.
• If the Pega 7 server connects to the selected database using JDBC URL, the URL may include < and > characters. Some authentication and security software can be configured to reject URLs containing these characters, as a security precaution. As a workaround, change the software settings to allow these characters in this situation.
• The Storage Stream column (pzPVStream) of the pr_operators table contains Operator ID passwords in encrypted form. For maximum security of your Pega 7 system, do not alter the schema for this table to expose the password property as a column.
• By design, you can't use this tool to expose a transient property, because by definition a transient property has no values in the database.
• By design, you can't select the pr_other table, because no Data-Admin-DB-Table instance is linked to it. Use database utilities to move the rows to a more appropriate table, create an associated Data-Admin-DB-Table instance, then use this wizard to expose the columns.

Working with the PegaRULES database — Table and Column basics Working with the PegaRULES database Working with the PegaRULES database — Using the Column Populator utility About the Property Optimization tool

Tools — System

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