Circumstance Definition rules
Completing the Create, Save As, or Specialization form

Records can be created in various ways. You can add a new record to your application or copy an existing one. You can specialize existing rules by creating a copy in a specific ruleset, against a different class or (in some cases) with a set of circumstance definitions. You may copy data instances but they do not support specialization as they are not versioned.

Based on your use case, the Create, Save As, or Specialization form is used to create the record. The number of fields and available options vary by record type. Start by familiarizing yourself with the generic layout of these forms and their common fields using the following Developer Help topics:

• Completing the Create form Designer Studio – Completing the Create form
• Completing the Save As form Completing the Save As form
• Completing the Specialization form Completing the Specialization form

This help topic help topic identifies the key parts and options that are applicable to the record type you are creating.

Create a circumstance definition by selecting Circumstance Definition from the Technical category.

NOTE: When creating a circumstance definition rule, the PegaRULES database is accessed with a database account that has specific grants (capabilities). These grants may not be available to all developers. They can be provided by a DB Admin account, which can be identified on the Database tab of the Database Name instance for the PegaRULES database or in the prconfig.xml file. See Database Name form — Completing the Database tab.

If you do not have these database grants, a warning appears when you save the Circumstance Definition rule. The Circumstance Definition rule saves correctly, but you may not be able to define a report on rules with this circumstance (such as the View > Rule > Find by Circumstance report).

Database software supporting your Pega 7 Platform system limits the number of columns that can occur in any database table. When creating a Circumstance Definition rule, you may not exceed this limit. See PDN article Troubleshooting: "Exceeds the maximum number of columns" when creating a Circumstance Definition rule.

Key parts:

A circumstance definition rule has three key parts:

When performing a Save As using the same Apply to and Template Name, the new and the original instances will, by default, have identical properties and values in the Apply this Definition table in the Definition tab on the rule form. This creates conflict errors that prevent the new instance from being saved. Change the property values in either form to successfully save the new rule.

For information on how circumstance template and circumstance definition rules are used in multivariate circumstancing, see the PDN article How multivariate circumstancing works.

Rule resolution

When searching for rules of this type, the system:

• Filters candidate rules based on a requestor's ruleset list of rulesets and versions
• Searches through ancestor classes in the class hierarchy for candidates when no matching rule is found in the starting class

Time-qualified and circumstance-qualified rule resolution features are not available for this rule type.

Related information

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