High volume quote requests parameters

It is common for a carrier to need to handle large volumes of incoming quote requests from anonymous or guest users. As a consequence, the server that supports the quote requests needs to be able to provide near-linear scaling to handle the volume of incoming requests.

One way to manage a large volume of quote requests is to implement an additional set of PolicyCenter servers to specifically handle anonymous quote requests. These servers are in addition to the System-of-Record (SOR) PolicyCenter servers that comprise the PolicyCenter cluster. Typically, the high volume quoting servers are not members of PolicyCenter cluster so as to avoid latency issues created by cluster channel communications. In addition, these servers do not actually persist the generated quotes to an RDBMS (Oracle or SQLServer) in the standard table structure. Instead, the purpose of the quote servers is to generate a quote document that one can later import into the PolicyCenter system-of-record and bind there, if required.

To support this separation of functionality and purpose, Guidewire provides a way to designate a server as a HVQ (High Volume Quote) server. In this way, it is possible to distinguish between HVQ servers and SOR servers. Server instances designated as HVQ allow only certain types of operations. For example, HVQ servers permit quote generation using a specific API or quote storage, but do not support archiving.

To manage this separation of functionality, Guidewire provides multiple configuration parameters in config.xml that you can set to indicate whether the server instance is SOR or HVQ.

`HVQEnabled`

This Boolean parameter has the following meanings:

`true`	Server is in a high volume quote (HVQ) environment
`false`	Server has no support for high volume quoting

The default for this configuration parameter is false. If you do not set configuration parameter HVQEnabled to true, the server defaults to having no support for high volume quoting.

Default: false

`HVQServer`

This Boolean parameter has the following meaning.

`true`	Server is a high volume quote (HVQ) server
`false`	Server is a system-of-record (SOR) server

The default for this configuration parameter is false. If you do not set configuration parameter HVQServer to true, the server defaults to being a SOR server.

The value of configuration parameter HVQServer is mutually exclusive with that of configuration parameter ArchiveEnabled. Setting both of these parameters to true generates an error condition at server start-up, causing the server to fail to start.

The value of configuration parameter HVQServer depends on the value of configuration parameter HVQEnabled. If the value of HVQServer is true, the value of HVQEnabled must also be true. Setting HVQServer to true and HVQEnabled to false generates an error condition at server start-up, causing the server to fail to start.

Guidewire recommends that you use the env attribute on the HVQEnbled parameter definition in config.xml to avoid creating separate WAR or EAR files for the individual servers. The following example configuration in config.xml illustrates the use of the env attribute in the HVQEnbled parameter definition.

<param name="HVQServer" value="true" env="hvq_prod"/>
<param name="HVQServer" value="true" env="hvq_staging"/>
<param name="HVQServer" value="true" env="hvq_uat"/>
<param name="HVQServer" value="true" env="hvq_qa"/>
<param name="HVQServer" value="false"/> // default

Notice that if the env attribute is set to a hvq value, the value of HVQServer is true. Conversely, if the parameter definition does not specify the env attribute, the value of HVQServer is false.

Default: false

`MaxHVQSearchResults`

This Integer parameter restricts the number of quotes that PolicyCenter returns to a user who searches for a quote on the external quote database. If the number to return is greater than this value, then PolicyCenter prompts the user to narrow the search parameters. The value of this parameter must be 1 or greater.

Default: 100