Prerequisites to installing PolicyCenter on Oracle

Create a separate user and schema for each Guidewire application. Sharing a schema can result in naming conflicts for primary key constraints and indexes.

Ensure that your Oracle database is running in an environment that optimizes storage performance while maintaining storage maintainability. Oracle recommends you use the SAME (Stripe and Mirror Everywhere) strategy. To learn more about the SAME strategy, consult the following document:

You must install a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) on all Oracle databases hosting PolicyCenter. The only exception is if the PolicyCenter application locale is English and you only require case-insensitive searches. Ensure that initialization parameter java_pool_size is set to a value of above 50 MB.

Configure Oracle to use asynchronous IO. Asynchronous IO significantly simplifies a database’s IO management while increasing its performance. For performance reasons, tune your operating system to Oracle database requirements. Oracle provides guidance on tuning your database based on:

  • Operating system
  • Available memory
  • Database release

Consult Oracle documentation and support web site for information on how to tune your database.

The Oracle database supports server-side caching that can help increase PolicyCenter performance. The size of the Oracle database cache is critical to supporting server-side caching. For internal tests, Guidewire uses a database cache size of 3.6 GB or more. Consult the Oracle documentation for information on selecting a cache size appropriate to your server computer’s architecture.

After your database is in production, you cannot easily modify the storage architecture. Guidewire recommends that you test and tune your database’s storage performance prior to installing PolicyCenter. There are many tools available for optimizing database performance, including open source tool, IOzone (www.iozone.org).