Q&A Session for "What's New in PegaRULES Process Commander V5.4" Webinar, 27-FEB-08
During each developer Webinar, we dedicate additional staff to answer your questions via Chat. What appears below is a capture of the relevant questions from our "What's New in PegaRULES Process Commander V5.4" session on 27-FEB-08.
To view the webinar recording, see Webinar Archive: What's New in PegaRULES Process Commander V5.4.
Question | Answer |
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| Q-01: Does the new version require any configuration changes in WebSphere 6.1? If it requires any changes in WAS, how could I get the updated install/config document for the review? | A-01: The 5.4 install guide will be available for download on the PDN once 5.4 is GA. |
| Q-02: Do the various frameworks, such as SmartAdjust, work with 5.4? | A-02: Yes. The intent is that PRPC V5.4 will be compatible with the most recent past formal release of Pega-supplied frameworks such as Smart Adjust. For example, the most recent release of SmartAdjust was done on PRPC V5.1, so we're testing this release against PRPC V5.4. Pegasystems is not planning to test all past frameworks releases as each of these provides an upgrade path from older versions to their past formal release. |
| Q-03: Does Direct Capture generate Draft Flows? | A-03: The Flows generated by the Direct Capture capabilities in the Application Accelerator are not set to draft mode as all the components necessary to execute the flow have been created as well. As always, you have the option to set an generated flow to draft mode. |
| Q-04: Will PRPC 5.4 be certified as Vista compliant? | A-04: End-user applications will run in the Vista Environment, but the developer edition will not. We're currently targeting Vista compliance for developers in an upcoming SP to V5.4 - not a major release. |
| Q-05: Most of these rules usually belong to a class and a rule set. If there is no class structure required for prototyping screens and flows how are they stored and referenced? | A-05: A class is still required but you can prototype screens and flows at any out-of-the-box class you wish including PegaSample, Work-, or any class that has been generated for you using the Application Accelerator or Application Express. |
| Q-06: The "Multi-Thread" is a PRThread or an Operating System thread? | A-06: PRThread |
| Q-07: Please provide a list of all the SRs/fixes that are going to be part of the PRPC 5.4 release. | A-07: A complete list will be posted on the PDN when the final release becomes generally available. Specifically, what you seek will be in the Release Notes document. |
| Q-08: Is there a developer edition for 5.4? | A-08: The "Personal Edition" distributions will continue, yes. They usually lag the complete product releases by about four weeks, and you should contact your account representative to request the distribution. |
| Q-09: Regarding browsers, when will IE7 be supported? | A-09: IE 7 is fully supported in V5.4 |
| Q-10: Regarding the Multiple Access Groups / Portals. It appears that you can only be attached to one at any one time (based on the radio button shown on the screen) please confirm. | A-10: In 5.4 you will have the ability to process work from multiple applications. As an example, you can process worklist items from multiple applications that require a separate access group. |
| Q-11: Will rule refactoring change all references including the ones in activity steps and handcoded rules like Rule-Obj-Html? | A-11: Yes. The refactoring tools evaluate all hand-coded elements including, HTML, Java steps, etc. |
| Q-12: Are there any migration procedures going from 5.3 to 5.4? | A-12: "Migration" should be fairly straight forward: nothing quite as detailed as you may have experienced from V4.2 SP6 to V5. |
| Q-13: If you index a field, will it retroactively index existing work objects that were created prior to indexing? | A-13: No. Depending on your existing volume of work, you will need to consider your options to update existing objects. The simplest solution is to run the Resaver function from the prdbutil servlet or run the Code.RecreateIndexesForClass Activity. |
| Q-14: Are there any plans to support Lotus Notes in the way you support Outlook? | A-14: The calendar integration w/ V5.4 is specific to MS Outlook at this time. |
| Q-15: As a new Pega customer, we are going to implement our BPM solutions using V5.3 SP2. Is it wise to continue that path and followed by migration, or to implement directly in V5.4 | A-15: It is difficult for us to determine that without fully understanding which business case you are solving, but it certainly would be less of an overhead to just upgrade a development environment as opposed to all dev, test and production environments - so from that perspective, better to upgrade sooner than later. |
| Q-16: Will PRPC V5.4 be supported on the WebSphere 64 bit 6.x platform? | A-16: Yes. |
| Q-17: Does the multi variable circumstance work for data tables? | A-17: No. Circumstance can only be applied to classes that are subject to rule resolution which typically includes things that inherit from Rule-. Data tables are not rule resolved. |
| Q-18: Does the delete include locked rules belonging to the class? | A-18: Yes, the Delete a Class feature will remove all rules/instances defined on that class regardless of whether they are checked out, or locked in some other way. |
| Q-19: Can you please confirm that the rule compare feature compares rules across environments that reside on different servers? Does it compare Data- rules? | A-19: Yes. You can use a Rule-Admin-Product to compare rules and data across instances on separate servers. |
| Q-20: Is there an additional license cost for all these Frameworks? | A-20: Yes. Automated Testing, the Test Management Framework and the Project Management frameworks are require additional license. Please contact your Pega Account Executive for additional details. |
| Q-21: Is the Test Manager Framework and Project Management Framework being sold as separate applications or included in 5.4? I thought Steve mentioned it would be separate but I wanted to double check. | A-21: Automated Testing, the Test Management Framework and the Project Management frameworks require an additional license. Please contact your Pega Account Executive for additional details. |
| Q-22: When an index is created on a property, in which table is the new column created? | A-22: New Indexed properties are added to the pr_other_idx table. If the user does not have access to update the DB, the DDL scripts will be presented to the user for download. You can alter the table mapping by updating the Data-Admin-DB-Table record as well. |
| Q-23: Will the service rule which runs in asynchronous mode retain the items in the queue even if the server is bounced? | A-23: Yes. Queued items are stored in the database. |
| Q-24: I'd like more details on the SOAP enhancements. What are they? Are the enhancements for services, connectors, or both? | A-24: Below are a few major changes in support of SOAP connectors and services. There are others that you will be able to research further once the 5.4 is GA and the latest documentation is available on PDN.
SOAP Connector enhancements
SOAP Service Updates |
| Q-25: Is there any training courses designed to bring developers up to speed on new features, best ways to accomplish common tasks and capabilities? | A-25: Pegasystems is updating the core curriculum to V5.4 this year and the materials will be made available in separate courses as appropriate. There is currently a full section of V5.4-specific material available on the PDN. |
| Q-26: How long before the Health Care frameworks are delivered to run on PRPC 5.4?. What types of imports will be available to jump start the application profiler process if already captured in existing systems? | A-26: The release schedule for frameworks on 5.4 varies based upon the framework. Typically, Solution Frameworks lag behind by 60-90 days from PRPC GA date. However, given significant key enhancements in 5.4 and specific customer requests, the following frameworks will be released within 30-45 days of the 5.4 GA:
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| Q-27: Hi, with enhanced smartframes, would we be able to take an existing developed section and save it as an enhanced smartframe? | A-27: Yes, the process of saving with the new smartframe designer is seamless. |
| Q-28: In the Application Profiler, will existing application UIs (e.g. custom or the Health Care framework UIs) be available in the toolkit to select as jumpstart components for use in the Application Profiler Draft designs? | A-28: The ability to 'prime' and application profile is not present in the initial release. We are currently working on that feature and is should be available shortly. Since the Direct Capture of Objectives (DCO) capabilities are a separate RuleSet, enhancements will be released off cycle. The use cases, work types, reports, and correspondence will eventually be part of the Application Profile for a framework. |
| Q-29: When comparing actual % on flows to projected %'s, can the user define the time frame to report on - i.e. The % approved specifically for January 2008? | A-29: Currently, you cannot filter the actuals based upon a date range. This is a good suggestion that we will consider for a subsequent release. |
| Q-30: On the Listview Join, does the system predetermine what classes you can join so that it knows the keys to join in the tables for the fastest running? | A-30: For selected classes, the join does predetermine the keys to join on. |
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| Q-31: Reports don't have the simple things like identifying report IDs and date/time stamps of when they were generated. Can these types of attributes be easily added to all reports in V5.4? This is very important for "point in time" capture or once reports are printed. | A-32: You can include custom header and footer sections in reports to capture/display such information. |
| Q-32: I just didn't see a place to tell it what field to join on. For example, I might want to join the work table and the party table but I would need to tell it which field in the work table to use as the key to the party table. | A-32: The basic join suggestion-ing is there. For: Work -> Assign, Work > History, Work -> Attach, all Declarative Indexes. |
| Q-33: Will there be a separate webinar on reporting at some point? | A-33: Currently, there is not another webinar scheduled specifically for reporting V5.4. There are also several new PDN articles on V5.4 Reporting. |
| Q-34: Does the multi-variate circumstancing apply to data tables? | A-34: No, it is limited to Rules. |
| Q-35: When you change a class name to something outside of inheritance paths, what happens to potential orphans? | A-35: We don't leave orphans behind. We give the option to rename instances as well. |
| Q-36: Can you please explain how the automated testing tools differ or enhance the automated testing through other automated testing tools (e.g. Mercury Interactive). | A-36: Automated Testing detects differences on the clipboard and the database for each step. Other automated testing tools do not have the ability to detect such differences. Automated Testing can also auto generate all test cases for decision tables. |