New and changed in system administration in 10.0.0

Intentional logging

New in PolicyCenter 10.0.0 is the ability to track specific business events in the application logs.

Business event logging

A business event is an event of special interest in the PolicyCenter application, such as a user logging into Guidewire PolicyCenter. New in 10.0 is the ability to use special event markers to capture information about certain significant events in the application and output that information in multiple ways. A special event marker is an additional attribute that prints to the log along with the log message. This additional information makes it relatively easy to find and extract the log record associated with a special event.

In Guidewire InsuranceSuite applications, intentional logging is the act of capturing information about specific business events or application metrics and outputting that information to the PolicyCenter application logs.

Profiler integration

Guidewire integrates intentional logging with Guidewire Profiler. Thus, it is possible to generate markers for intentional logging automatically while using Guidewire Profiler.

Traceability IDs

New in logging in 10.0.0 is the use of traceability IDs. A Traceability ID is a String UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) that Guidewire uses to track a single user transaction or operation across multiple logging statements. The logging statements can span calls across multiple applications in inter-application integration.

Configuring intentional logging

See Intentional logging configuration for more information.

Skip producer code checks on accounts with no active policies

To skip producer code checks on accounts with no active policies, use the bypassProducerCodeCheckOnAccountsWithNoActivePolicies attribute in security-config.xml. When true, if all policies on the account are expired, any agent (regardless of agency) can view the account, and can start a new submission on that account. The account is treated as if there are no policies on it.

See also

System property VerifyRuleImportDataModelCheckSum

New in PolicyCenter 10.0.0 is system property VerifyRuleImportDataModelCheckSum. Use this system property to enable or disable verification of the data model while importing business rules into a non-production system. This is especially useful as a data model change in the importing environment can prevent rule import. By disabling the data model verification, it becomes possible to import the rules.

System property VerifyRuleImportDataModelCheckSum can be one of the following Boolean values.
true PolicyCenter enforces verification of the data model during rule import. The default is true.
false PolicyCenter does not enforce verification of the data model during rule import.
You can set system property VerifyRuleImportDataModelCheckSum in the following ways:
  • In PolicyCenter Studio, in the server JVM options.
  • From a PolicyCenter command prompt, as you start the application server.

See also

Changes to PolicyCenter logging

In PolicyCenter 10.0, Guidewire has changed how to configure and use application logging.

Logging API slf4j

Guidewire now uses the slf4j API, in conjunction with Apache log4j-2 libraries and internal Guidewire libraries, to provide logging in the PolicyCenter application.

Logging configuration file log4j2.xml

New in 10.0, Guidewire uses the XML-formated log4j2.xml logging configuration file to control the behavior of the logging activity in PolicyCenter. You access this file from the following location in Guidewire Studio:
  • configuration > config > logging
Configuration file log4j2.xml replaces the previous logging configuration file logging.properties. File log4j2.xml contains a number logger categories defined in the following public classes:
  • PCLoggerCategory
  • BizRulesLoggerCategory

Changes to Guidewire Profiler

In PolicyCenter 10.0.0, Guidewire has added the ability to profile Gosu servlets and REST API operations. To access Guidewire Profiler, log into Guidewire PolicyCenter using an administrative account and navigate to the following location:
  • Server Tools > Guidewire Profiler > Configuration

Changes to SQL Server DMV Snapshot screen

In PolicyCenter 10.0.0, Guidewire has changed the name and functionality of the (Server Tools) SQL Server DMV Snapshot screen. The new name of the screen is SQL Server Performance Report. This screen is only available if the database is SQL Server.

The updated SQL Server Performance Report screen

The renamed SQL Server Performance Report screen can now generate reports that include the following types of data, if specified:
Statistics data Description
SQL Server Dynamic Management Views

SQL Server provides Dynamic Management Views as a tool to monitor, diagnose, and tune database performance. Each performance report contains DMV information. PolicyCenter automatically generates this type of data and provides the data in each report.
SQL Server Query Store

SQL Server Query Store provides a set of tables separate from the Dynamic Management Views. Query Store persists data to disk, whereas DMV data is in-memory only and lost after a server restart. Thus, it is possible to obtain Query Store database statistics across server restarts.

You must enable SQL Server Query Store before you can generate statistics that use Query Store.
Database statistics This is the same information as available from the Server Tools Database Statistics report.
The updated screen contains several options that you can select:
Option Action
Include Query Store Analysis Select to include Query Store statistics in the SQL Server performance report. If you select this option, then you must also select a time interval for the Query Store data as well.
Include database statistics Select to include basic database statistics in the SQL Server performance report.

See The SQL Server Performance Report screen for more information.

Changes to system_tools

To support the updated SQL Server performance reporting, Guidewire has modified the system_tools command slightly. The following command options relate to the SQL Server performance reports.
Command option New or Changed Description
-sqlListIntervals New Determine the IDs of the SQL Server performance report time intervals
-mssqlPerfRpt Changed Generate a performance report using the interval IDs
-listPerfReports No change Determine the ID of each generated report
-getPerfReport No change Download an existing report to a local directory using its ID

See About SQL Server reports and system tools for more information.

Increased network traffic for user interface updates

PolicyCenter 10 uses a new user interface library for displaying application pages based on their PCF definitions. In previous releases, the PolicyCenter server would send a compact, object-based representation of a page to the client browser, and the browser would generate the HTML for rendering the page. In PolicyCenter 10, the server generates the full HTML and sends it to the browser. Because the HTML representation of the page is larger, this results in increased network traffic whenever a page is rendered.

On a fast network, you will most likely not notice any performance impact due to this change. On slower networks, you may want to consider having your application server or load balancer compress the traffic between the server and the client. Although compression may increase latency, the significant reduction in network traffic may provide an overall performance improvement.