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 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:
| Result | Date property | Start Date | End Date |
| Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs within a date range | Select | Select | Select |
| Rule to be effective only if the value of the specified date property occurs after a certain date | Select | Select | |
| Rule to be effective only within a date range | Select | Select | |
| Rule to be effective only after a certain date | Select |
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.