When to use gosu enhancements?

Question

I've seen the usage of gosu enhancements a lot within Guidewire application. However, it seems to me it is being overused. Like the following examples:

• An entity querying another entity (ie looks to me an entity modeling problem) .
• An entity calling a webservice (ie its beyond the purpose of the entity) .

Are there any recommended use cases when to use enhancements?

Answer 1

The recommended approach is that enhancements should be used to extend existing classes with new methods or properties closely related to the original class object.

I agree that enhancements seem to be overused, that is probably because its the easy way to add some logic in existing (OOTB) parts of the Guidewire system.

Answer 2

Your observations are totally valid. Enhancements should preferably be used for simple calculations where a permanent data model change is not required. Webservice calls and complex queries are recipes for performance issues when used inside an enhancement.

Enhancements can be used for standard getter/setter operations that could be obtained in a relatively straightforward calculation.

Answer 3

Yes, Enhancements are supposed to be used only for straight forward calculations which the business does not want to store in Database tables. Instead of using the enhancements, I think its better to have a helper Gosu class Where we shall execute the complex queries and some logical calculations.