Available in March 2009, Process Commander V5.5 offers hundreds of new capabilities for developers, application users, and system administrators, and resolves issues found in earlier versions.

This article describes the many new capabilities for system integration, with links to knowledgebase articles for examples and more detail. To learn about V5.5 features in other areas, see What's New in Version 5.5.

Simpler ways to parse or generate XML documents

The XML rule and Parse XML rule use a graphical tree structure to define mappings. See:

• How to create an XML document from property values using an XML rule
• How to parse an XML document using Parse XML rules

Easier simulation of connectors

Testing and simulation of connectors are enhanced. See How to simulate a SOAP connector and How to test a SOAP connector using sample data.

Send a file to a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server

A new rule type allows an application to send a file to a remote server using File Transfer Protocol. See How to copy files to external systems using FTP.

Parse or compose a fixed-record structure

A new rule type allows assembling a fixed-format record structure from property values. Alternatively, the rule can parse a single text value into multiple property values.

For parsing, this rule type can be used as a simpler alternative to the powerful but more complex Parse Structured rule. See How to process structured streams using the Map Structured rule.

High-performance file import

Service file rules can execute in a multithreaded mode for higher throughput. See How to support high-throughput file services with multithreading .

Create files during flow execution

Applications can output files to the server using a new connector rule type. For example, a flow execution can save a generated PDF document into a specific directory, where it can be accessed and forwarded or processed by other systems.

See How to write a file to the local file system using a file connector.

Track email conversations

Multiple email-messages to and from a party can be identified as a "conversation" and saved as work object attachments. Process Commander uses a generated ID value in the outgoing email header to recognize that an incoming message is a reply to an outgoing message.

As a result, the entire email "thread" or conversation is present as attachments, even if the outside sender truncated some material from their reply.See How to support email conversations.

Asynchronous SOAP connectors

A SOAP connector can execute synchronously, or asynchronously. If the Web service being called sends no reply, or is known to be slow to respond, the developer can configure asynchronous execution. In this situation, each connector request is queued for processing in background by the Pega-IntSvcs agent.

See How to call Web services with queued execution.

Direct import of Comma-Separated Values files

Use a Parse Delimited rule, you can import property values from a CSV file. The facility is simpler to configure and covers additional CSV options, compared with the V5.4 approach. See How to parse a Comma-Separated-Values file (V5.5)

Start listeners on one, all, or specified nodes

In a multinode cluster, you can control on which nodes a listener starts. See How to control which nodes a listener operates on startup.

Easier testing of MQ and JMS message connectors

New facilities speed debugging of message connectors. See:

• How to debug JMS connectors using BROWSE%2C PUT and GET message operations
• How to debug MQ connectors using BROWSE, PUT and GET message operations

Access resultsets from Oracle stored procedures

When using Connect SQL rules to an Oracle database, you can access the results of stored procedures directly using a new keyword.

See Using Oracle stored procedures with Connect SQL rules

SOAP connectors can use Web Services Security (WSS)

Optionally, your application's SOAP connectors can be encrypted and reference a keystore, in compliance with WSS and X.509 standards for public key encryption of digital certificates. See How to create SOAP connectors that use WSS username tokens and timestamps.

SOAP services from XSD files

Using the Connector and Metadata wizard, you can build a SOAP service based on an XML Schema Definition file (XSD).

The wizard creates properties, classes, XML Stream rules and XML Parse rules.

See How to build SOAP services based on third-party schema.