System limits and maximums

By design, Pega Platform is highly scalable. You can support one user or thousands of users. You can operate the system on an inexpensive Windows laptop or on a collection of enterprise servers, each with multiple processors.

Similarly, there are no inherent restrictions on the size or number of work items, assignments, history instances, data instances, and so on. Expanding your investment in disk space and database management facilities automatically expands the capacity of your applications.

The following maximums and limitations apply to this version. Contact Global Client Support if these affect your operation.

Column widths

  • Generally, ruleset names (pyRuleSetName property) can be up to 64 characters long. However, personal rulesets used for checkout are named based on the Operator ID, which can be up to 128 characters long.
  • An Operator ID value (pyUserName property) can be up to 128 characters long.
  • The internal key of an object (pzInsKey property) can be up to 255 characters for most tables.
  • A class name (pxObjClass property) for a class that you create can be up to 56 characters long. System-created classes such as History- classes can be up to 64 characters long.
  • The visible key (pxInsName property) can be up to 128 characters long.
  • A Short Description for a rule or data form (pyLabel property) can be up to 64 characters long.
  • A label in a layout cell on a user form (pyLabel property) is limited to 64 character maximum. Use a paragraph rule (Rule-HTML-Paragraph rule type) to present longer read-only text in the cell.
  • A team (work group) name can be up to 64 characters long.
  • A property name can be up to 64 characters long.
  • The system name (key of the Data-Admin-System data instance) can be up to 32 characters long.
  • The pzPVStream column or Storage Stream has a maximum of 2 gigabytes. This column typically has a data type of BLOB.
  • A node name can be up to 32 characters long.
  • The third key part of a field value rule is limited to 64 characters.
  • For Declare Expression rules, the length of the Page Context field is limited to 64 characters.
  • Organization identifiers, the key of Data-Admin-Organization instances, are limited to 32 characters. Likewise, division names (the second key part of Data-Admin-OrgDivision instances), and unit names (the third key part of Data-Admin-OrgUnit instances), are limited to 32 characters.
  • The description text (Subject field) of a file attachment is limited to 60 characters.

Review the database schema of your system to learn the size limits of other properties. See The Pega Platform database .

Other limits

  • A work item can be processed by a single flow at most 500 times. By design, this limit prevents runaway looping.
  • You cannot attach a file larger than 1 gigabyte to a work item. Similarly, this limit applies when using the Upload button on Rule-File-Text, Rule-File-Binary, and Rule-File-eForm rule forms, and with the Upload button on the Import landing page tab. You can enforce a higher or lower limit on your system by changing the value for the Initialization/MaximumFileUploadSizeMB parameter in the prconfig.xml file or dynamic system setting.
  • Broadcast messages are limited to 255 characters.
  • The in-memory buffer for the Tracer tool is limited to 500 unprocessed events; the Tracer fails if this buffer overflows. You can configure a larger limit by directing unprocessed events to a temporary disk file. See Adjusting the buffer size of the Tracer header.
  • The rule cache is ordinarily limited to 10,000 entries. Contact Global Client Support if your production system needs a larger cache.
  • Report definitions operate best on searches that result in 10,000 or fewer rows. If report paging is enabled, the system enforces no limit, but each page is limited to 200 rows.
  • The Split for Each shape in a flow is by default limited to a maximum of starting 50 new flows. This limit is imposed to prevent infinite looping, but can be raised in specific situations.
  • The system is initially limited to 200 data tables created with the Data Table wizard. This limit can be increased if needed.
    Note: Data tables are replaced by local data storage, rendering this limitation obsolete.
  • Database software supporting your Pega Platform system limits the number of columns that can occur in any database table. When creating or updating a Circumstance Definition rule, you cannot exceed this limit.
  • Each developer can define up to 1,000 rule shortcuts.