Platform generated schema changes

The schema for the Pega Platform database can grow and evolve through a variety of tools and automatic changes. Automatic changes are possible only if the primary account or the administrative account on the Database data instance that defines the connection to the Pega Platform database has the ALTER TABLE and CREATE TABLE capabilities.

Often these capabilities are on development systems but are not on production systems (as determined by the production level value in the System data instance.) In addition, certain capabilities require that you have specific privileges.

Automatic schema changes

In a development system, the Pega Platform automatically creates a new table each time you indirectly create a new concrete class by using App Studio, the Connector and Metadata wizard, and similar tools. You must have the SchemaTableCreation privilege to create these tables. The following types of tables are created:

  • Work- — When you define a concrete class derived from Work- that is a class group, the Pega Platform creates a database table that is a copy of the pc_work table. The table is named pc_zzzzz_work, where ZZZZZ is the class group name in all lowercase.

  • Data- — Optionally, you can save the rows of a data table in a dedicated table by using the Data Table wizard. The table is named pr_zzzzz, where zzzzz is the class name of the table.

    Note: Local data storage replaced data tables.
  • History — The new table is named pc_history_zzzzz_work, where ZZZZZ is the class group name in all lowercase.

Property optimization schema changes

To support reporting, you can expose a property value to make it a separate database column by using the Property Optimization or Modify Schema wizards. These tools can add or update a column in an existing database table.

Schema changes from an archive

You can import and apply schema changes from an archive by using the Import landing page. This approach is useful when you want to keep the schemas of two systems synchronized.