Updating product model patterns in a rolling upgrade

Guidewire does not support all product model pattern changes during a rolling upgrade of the individual members of a PolicyCenter server cluster. In general, Guidewire only supports the addition of new product model patterns for types that support availability logic.

It is possible to make narrowly specific changes safely to the following types of product model patterns in a rolling upgrade:

Guidewire only supports changes to types of product model patterns and other product model information that the above list explicitly describes.

Note the following:
  1. PolicyCenter provides the ability to reload product model availability data through the Server Tools Product Model Info screen, by clicking Reload Availability. Guidewire disable this button during a rolling upgrade. The button does not become active until a user clicks Rolling Upgrade Complete in the Server Tools Upgrade and Versions screen.
  2. Guidewire disables (makes inactive) all updates to product model patterns during a rolling upgrade in order to preserve data integrity. After you complete the rolling upgrade, you must run Product Model Pattern Activation batch processing to make active all product model patterns that you added in the upgrade process.
  3. PolicyCenter upgrade logic automatically triggers the activation of product model patterns added during a rolling upgrade if any node in the cluster restarts after the rolling upgrade completes. However, Guidewire does not recommend that you uses this mechanism to activate product patterns. Run Product Model Pattern Activation batch processing instead.
  4. Guidewire specifically does not support the deletion of product model patterns of any type of upgrade.
  5. Guidewire specifically does not support adding lookups with a status of Unavailable during a rolling upgrade.

Product Designer can insert empty XML tags that prevent rolling upgrade

If you use Product Designer to modify a product model pattern created outside of Product Designer (for example, created in a release prior to PolicyCenter 8.0), Product Designer inserts empty XML tags for certain elements (<AvailabilityScript/>, for example). While these changes are generally legal to make in PolicyCenter, the upgrade configuration verifier flags the changes as illegal and thus blocks the rolling upgrade.

To prevent this issue, Guidewire recommends that you inspect any changes to product model pattern files (the .xml files) before you deploy them to production. If you discover new empty XML tags added by Product Designer, do one of the following:
  • Remove the empty tags from the affected files before starting the rolling upgrade.
  • Push the existing product model pattern XML files into production using a full database upgrade.

See also