Extract rules overview

After enabling the built-in Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) rule set on Pega Platform, you can run the BIX extraction processes from the Extract rule to extract class data from your application. Create an Extract rule to define the class data to extract from your application using the Business Intelligence Exchange (BIX) ruleform.

> Extracting data from BIX

To extract data from within Pega Platform :

Enable the BIX ruleset. For details, see Enabling the BIX ruleset.
Create a new Extract rule from the New tab. For details, see Creating and running an Extract rule.
Specify the class properties to be extracted on the Definition tab.
Establish any filters for the data on the Filter Criteria tab. For details, see Creating and running an Extract: Filter Criteria.
Specify the destination for the extraction process on the File Specification tab.
Run the Extract rule. Running a BIX extraction through a Job Scheduler rule is recommended for production environments. For details, see Using the Job Scheduler rule to extract data with BIX.
Review BIX logs. For details, see BIX logging.
Consider performance enhancements. For details see, Optimizing BIX data extraction performance.

> Extractions for Pega Cloud and on-premises applications

BIX extraction processes differ depending upon if you use Pega Cloud Services or an on-premises deployment for your application.

For more detailed information about running a BIX extraction in Pega Cloud, including obtaining extract files from the Pega Cloud File Storage Repository, see Overview of BIX extractions in Pega Cloud environments.
For more detailed information about running a BIX extraction in on-premises applications, see Overview of BIX extractions in on-premises environments.

> Extract process

Extractions are specified at the class level, not at the application level. For example, if you have three case types in your application and would like to extract data for each, you must define an Extract rule for each of the three case types.

Note: If you are extracting from a class group, the extract files will include all classes in the class group. If the class is not a class group, the extract files will only include instances of that class.

You can specify the properties in each class of your application that you want to extract. You can extract all properties, including Value Lists, Value Groups, and multiple levels of embedded Pages, Page Lists, and Page Groups. The BIX extraction for a class can include any or all properties inherited by that class from other classes. You can also filter the data to be extracted, extracting only the data that matches the conditions you set.

The data contained in these properties can be extracted to an XML file, to a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file, or to one or more tables in a relational database.

Note: A single extraction process cannot concurrently extract from multiple databases or different database instances on the same machine. Each extraction process can have only a single data source. You can run different extraction processes, extracting from multiple Pega Platform databases, concurrently.

> Extraction frequency

BIX extractions do not extract data in real-time as the Pega Platform database is updated. Because BIX runs manually through the Extract rule or automatically using a Pega Platform Job Scheduler rule, it can be scheduled to run as frequently as desired.

> Schema

You can generate a database schema format for extractions based on your specifications in the Extract rule definition. You can specify the table and column names and define the data type and precision. BIX provides an option to generate a Data Definition Language (DDL) file for the database schema it expects to write data to during an extraction. This file is used by a Database Analyst (DBA) to create the appropriate tables in the destination database. Any updates to the Extract definition that result in the addition of columns or tables need to be added manually by a DBA.

When generating to XML, the XML element names match the Pega Platform names and cannot be modified.

> Category

An Extract rule is an instance of the Rule-Admin-Extract class. Extract rules belong to the SysAdmin category.

BIX extractions include a time stamp and a batch identifier. This tagging can help you compare information from different extractions or isolate information from a specific extraction process.