Disabling product artifacts during testing

Multiple sets of product artifacts

During the development of an APD product, the product moves from a visualized product to a finalized product. However, product development does not always move in a single direction. Rather, it is typically an iterative process. Testing of the finalized product may uncover issues that require fixes to the visualized product. Once the visualized product has been fixed, it must be reinstalled as a finalized product and retested.

Thus, during product testing, it is not unusual to have two sets of product artifacts: one for the visualized product and one for the finalized product. Furthermore, these two sets of product artifacts are not necessarily in sync at all times.

Disabling product artifacts

The LOB-specific APIs use the product artifacts as the backing data source for the APIs. However, the LOB-specific APIs can only access one set of product artifacts at a time. Because there might be multiple sets of product artifacts, the system APIs give you the ability to disable either set of product artifacts. Disabling a set of product artifacts can also be useful when you have inadvertently created a line with internal errors that are significant enough that it could prevent PolicyCenter from running.

Every product has an Enable for REST API flag. When this flag is set to Disabled, the system APIs will not use the visualized product artifacts. This field is visible in Advanced Product Designer on the Product Definition screen only when the user's Product Design Mode preference is set to Developer.

Every installed product has a product file in the integration/apis/installedlobs directory. This is a YAML file whose name starts with the product's Abbreviation as defined on the Product Definition screen. If this file is renamed or removed, the system APIs will not use the finalized product artifacts.

Disabling product artifacts typically occurs in development environments only. This is because it is unlikely that a visualized product (or a product with significant errors) would be brought into a production environment.