The Marketing department wants to add information for attorneys and doctors;For doctors, store the name...

When extending the Guidewire Data Model, developers must choose the most efficient storage mechanism based on the nature of the data and its relationship to existing entities. In this scenario, the requirement is to store a single piece of information—a school name—for two specific subtypes of person contacts: Doctors and Attorneys.

According to Guidewire best practices for Entity Extensions, if a piece of data has a one-to-one relationship with an entity and is a simple data type (like a String/Varchar), it should be added directly to the entity extension file (.etx) as a column. Options B and C follow this principle. By adding MedSchool_Ext to the ABDoctor entity and LawSchool_Ext to the ABAttorney entity, the developer ensures that the data is stored in the specific table where it is relevant. This avoids unnecessary complexity in the database schema and simplifies UI configuration, as the fields can be accessed directly from the object without traversing a foreign key or array.

Alternatives like creating separate entities for the school names (Options A, D, and F) or using an array on the base person entity (Option E) represent "over-engineering." Creating a separate entity and a foreign key is only recommended if the data needs to be normalized (e.g., if multiple people share the exact same school record and that record has its own attributes like address or accreditation). In the context of a Marketing request to simply capture a name, adding a varchar column with the mandatory _Ext suffix is the most performant and maintainable approach. It keeps the database joins to a minimum and follows the Guidewire "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle for configuration.