Published Release Notes

Improved security after hiding SQL values

In Pega Platform™ version 8.6, the default value of the showSQLInList dynamic system setting changes to FALSE, which suppresses the visibility of the SQL values in the Clipboard tool. With this setting disabled, when you run a report definition the clipboard does not display sensitive values in the pxSQLStatementPre and pxSQLStatementPost properties, which makes your system less vulnerable. If you want to display the values, in the .prconfig file, set the prconfig/security/showSQLInListPage/default to TRUE.

Additional connection pool parameters for JDBC URL external databases

For improved external JDBC URL database connection performance, Pega Platform™ now supports multiple Hikari connection pool parameters directly in the Data-Admin-DB-Name rule. Previously, Pega Platform supported a limited number of connection pool parameters to optimize your database connection using dynamic system settings (DSS). Now you can optimize your JDBC URL connection pool sizing to meet your traffic requirements through additional parameters without switching rules. Additional parameters include client-request parameters to maximize the connectivity to your external databases.

For more information, see Creating and updating external database instances with JDBC URLs.

Upgrade impact

During an upgrade to Pega Infinity™ release 8.6 and later, clients who previously specified their JDBC URL connection parameters through dynamic system settings (DSS) or prconfig file must delete the corresponding DSS or prconfig elements immediately after upgrade. The old parameters that you previously specified through DSS or the prconfig file override the equivalent parameters that you specified in the JDBC URL rule after your upgrade.

For more information about deleting your previous DSS or prconfig elements, see Deleting dynamic system setting connection parameters and Deleting connection parameters in the prconfig file.

Enhanced PEGA0104 alert

The PEGA0104 alert now includes the thread pool size, a list of activities that are waiting in the queue for a thread to become available, and details on how long it took to capture the thread dump.  By default, the alert also includes the thread dump.  You can disable the inclusion of the thread dump by changing the related configuration option. 

For more information, see PEGA0104 alert: Background tasks have exceeded a threshold time when attempting to acquire a thread from pool or executor.

New alert for job scheduler activity that exceeds a time threshold

Pega Platform™ now saves the PEGA0130 alert in the performance alert log at the time that a scheduled job exceeds the configured threshold value. To identify performance issues with long-running processes, you can monitor the log for the alert while the job scheduler runs.

The alert is enabled by default. You can change the default threshold value or disable the alert in dynamic system settings.

For more information, see PEGA0130 alert: Current Job Scheduler run is taking too long.

Data model inheritance does not depend on ruleset context

Search and Reporting Service (SRS) in Pega Platform™ 8.6 now provides an improved method of synchronizing data model by distinct users. In applications built on earlier versions of Pega Platform, some users might encounter difficulties in indexing data. Now, the data model that the system sends to SRS does not depend on access privileges. With this enhancement, each user of your application is eligible to synchronize data.

Create, Save As, and Specialization forms

The familiar “New” and “Save As” forms have been streamlined to make record creation faster and more intuitive. You can easily target a specific layer in your application stack, interactively define the record’s configuration and select only those circumstance definitions that make sense for your use case.

While the underlying behavior for creating a record is not new for this release, the redesigned UI of these forms and new defaulting strategy for fields is worth noting:

To launch these forms, use one of the new options found in the action area of the form header:

Note that not all record types support the ability to specialize by circumstance.

For more guidance on how to use the Create, Save As and Specialization forms, please refer to: Intuitive record creation and specialization

Redirect users to logout screen

New applications built in Version 7.1 will automatically redirect users to the PRPC login page upon logout.

A new template, Web-Session-Return-Template, has been added, to allow developers to customize their applications to redirect users to a logout page, if they wish.  This template can be copied to a ruleset visible to unauthenticated requestors (via node configuration) and used to override Web-Session-Return.

Additional upgrade scripts for new columns

In Version 6.2, additional columns (Major, Minor, and Patch) containing ruleset Version information were added to 15 tables in the PRPC database. When upgrading from a pre-Pega 7 release, scripts must be manually run after the upgrade to populate these columns.

These scripts are located in the Resource Kit, under Additional Upgrade Scripts.

• If upgrading to a single schema, run both scripts.
• If upgrading to a split schema, run the _data script against the data schema and run the _rules script against the rules schema.

Choose the scripts for your database type:

• db2zos_rulesetversion_columns_data.sql
• db2zos_rulesetversion_columns_rules.sql

• mssql_rulesetversion_columns_data.sql
• mssql_rulesetversion_columns_rules.sql

• oracle_rulesetversion_columns_data.sql
• oracle_rulesetversion_columns_rules.sql

• postgres_rulesetversion_columns_data.sql
• postgres_rulesetversion_columns_rules.sql

• udb_rulesetversion_columns_data.sql
• udb_rulesetversion_columns_rules.sql

Source field not displaying in data transform

On the Data Transform rule form when using the Update Page action, if the Relation value is updated to “with values from”, the Source field will not be displayed.

(Note that for existing data transforms where the Source field has already been completed, this situation should not occur.)

Workaround

1. Below is a data transform that has been configured to use Update Page.
   
2. If a user were to choose an alternate source by updating the ‘with values from’ Relation value, they would not be prompted to provide a page name in the Source field.
   
3. At this point, to be able to enter the Source page value, the user has to save the rule, which results in an error because the source page value is blank. This causes the field to appear.
   
4. Once the field has appeared, the Source page value can be provided, and the form can be saved successfully.
   

Required Oracle optimization parameter

To optimize performance, set the Oracle parameter optimizer_index_cost_adj to a value between 20 and 25. If this value is not set, the system can run exceedingly slowly, potentially blocking users from login.