What are plugins?

PolicyCenter plugins are mini-programs (Gosu or Java classes) that PolicyCenter invokes to perform an action or calculate a result.

An example of a plugin that calculates a result is a policy number generation plugin, which PolicyCenter invokes to generate a new policy number as necessary.
An example of a plugin that performs an action would be a message transport plugin, the purpose of which is to send a message to an external system.

Plugin implementation classes

A Guidewire plugin class implements a specific plugin interface. Guidewire provides a set of plugin interfaces in the base configuration. You can create a new class that implements the plugin interface for your business needs. You can choose to implement a plugin as either a Gosu class, Java class, or OSGi bundle. Alternatively, if the PolicyCenter base configuration already provides a implementation of the plugin interface, then you can register it.

What is the Plugins Registry?

Within Studio, expand the configuration > config > Plugins > registry node to view the contents of the Plugins Registry. Each item in the Plugins Registry is a .gwp file that represents a plugin implementation in the base configuration. To configure a particular plugin, double-click its name in the registry to enter the Plugins Registry editor.

Each Plugins Registry item (each .gwp file) includes fields for the following information:

Plugin name – A unique name for this plugin implementation. Plugin names can include alphanumeric characters only. Space or blank characters are not allowed. If the plugin interface supports only a single implementation, make this the name of the interface without the package.
Implementation class – The plugin implementation class as a fully-qualified class name.
Plugin interface – The interface that the class implements. If the plugin interface field is left blank, PolicyCenter uses the plugin name as the interface name.

The Plugins Registry fields work slightly differently depending on whether the interface supports multiple implementations. Most plugin interfaces supports only a single plugin implementation. Other plugin interfaces, such as messaging plugins and startable plugins, support multiple plugin implementations.

Startable plugins

To register code that runs at server start up, you register startable plugin implementations. Startable plugins implement the IStartablePlugin interface. Typically, startable plugins are implemented as daemons, such as listeners to JMS queues. Unlike standard Guidewire plugins, you can stop and start startable plugins from the administrative interface. Alternatively, you can use PolicyCenter multi-threaded inbound integration APIs, which use startable plugins.