Data validation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.

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Data Validation - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In computer science, data validation is the process of ensuring that a

program operates on clean, correct and useful data. It uses routines,
often called "validation rules" or "check routines", that check for
correctness, meaningfulness, and security of data that are input to the
system. The rules may be implemented through the automated facilities
of a data dictionary, or by the inclusion of explicit application program
validation logic.

For business applications, data validation can be defined through

declarative data integrity rules, or procedure-based business rules[1].
Data that does not conform to these rules must negatively affect
business process execution. Therefore, data validation should start with
business process definition and set of business rules within this process.
Rules can be collected through the requirements capture exercise[2].

The simplest data validation verifies that the characters provided come
from a valid set. For example, telephone numbers should include the
digits and possibly the characters +, -, (, and ) (plus, minus, and
parentheses). A more sophisticated data validation routine would check
to see the user had entered a valid country code, i.e., that the number of
digits entered matched the convention for the country or area specified.

Incorrect data validation can lead to data corruption or a security

vulnerability. Data validation checks that data are valid, sensible,
reasonable, and secure before they are processed.

[edit] Validation methods

Allowed character checks
Checks that ascertain that only expected characters are present
in a field. For example a numeric field may only allow the digits
0-9, the decimal point and perhaps a minus sign or commas. A
text field such as a personal name might disallow characters such
as < and >, as they could be evidence of a markup-based security
attack. An e-mail address might require exactly one @ sign and
various other structural details. Regular expressions are effective
ways of implementing such checks. (See also data type checks
below)
Batch totals
Checks for missing records. Numerical fields may be added
together for all records in a batch. The batch total is entered and

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the computer checks that the total is correct, e.g., add the 'Total
Cost' field of a number of transactions together.
Cardinality Check
Checks that record has a valid number of related records. For
example if Contact record classified as a Customer it must have
at least one associated Order (Cardinality > 0). If order does not
exist for a "customer" record then it must be either changed to
"seed" or the order must be created. This type of rule can be
complicated by additional conditions. For example if contact
record in Payroll database is marked as "former employee", then
this record must not have any associated salary payments after
the date on which employee left organisation (Cardinality = 0).
Check digits
Used for numerical data. An extra digit is added to a number
which is calculated from the digits. The computer checks this
calculation when data are entered, e.g., The ISBN for a book. The
last digit is a check digit calculated modulus 11.[citation needed]
Consistency Checks
Checks fields to ensure data in these fields corresponds, e.g., If
Title = "Mr.", then Gender = "M".
Control totals
This is a total done on one or more numeric fields which appears
in every record. This is a meaningful total, e.g., add the total
payment for a number of Customers.
Cross-system Consistency Checks
Compares data in different systems to ensure it is consistent, e.g.,
The address for the customer with the same id is the same in
both systems. The data may be represented differently in
different systems and may need to be transformed to a common
format to be compared, e.g., one system may store customer
name in a single Name field as 'Doe, John Q', while another in
three different fields: First_Name (John), Last_Name (Doe) and
Middle_Name (Quality); to compare the two, the validation
engine would have to transform data from the second system to
match the data from the first, for example, using SQL:
Last_Name || ', ' || First_Name || substr(Middle_Name, 1, 1)
would convert the data from the second system to look like the
data from the first 'Doe, John Q'
Data type checks
Checks the data type of the input and give an error message if the
input data does not match with the chosen data type, e.g., In an
input box accepting numeric data, if the letter 'O' was typed
instead of the number zero, an error message would appear.
File existence check

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Checks that a file with a specified name exists. This check is

essential for programs that use file handling.
Format or picture check
Checks that the data is in a specified format (template), e.g.,
dates have to be in the format DD/MM/YYYY.
Regular expressions should be considered for this type of
validation.
Hash totals
This is just a batch total done on one or more numeric fields
which appears in every record. This is a meaningless total, e.g.,
add the Telephone Numbers together for a number of
Customers.
Limit check
Unlike range checks, data is checked for one limit only, upper OR
lower, e.g., data should not be greater than 2 (<=2).
Logic check
Checks that an input does not yield a logical error, e.g., an input
value should not be 0 when there will be a number that divides it
somewhere in a program.
Presence check
Checks that important data are actually present and have not
been missed out, e.g., customers may be required to have their
telephone numbers listed.
Range check
Checks that the data lie within a specified range of values, e.g.,
the month of a person's date of birth should lie between 1 and 12.
Referential Integrity
In modern Relational database values in two tables can be linked
through foreign key and primary key. If values in the primary key
field are not constrained by database internal mechanism[3], then
they should be validated. Validation of the foreign key field
checks that referencing table must always refer to a valid row in
the referenced table[4].
Spelling and grammar check
Looks for spelling and grammatical errors.
Uniqueness check
Checks that each value is unique. This can be applied to several
fields (i.e. Address, First Name, Last Name).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links
[edit] References

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1. ^ Data Validation, Data Integrity, Designing Distributed

Applications with Visual Studio .NET
2. ^ Arkady Maydanchik (2007), "Data Quality Assessment", Technics
Publications, LLC
3. ^ Oracle Foreign Keys
4. ^ Referential Integrity, Designing Distributed Applications with
Visual Studio .NET

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@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = "Wikipedia",
title = "Data validation --- Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia",
year = "2010",
url = "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Data_validation&oldi
note = "[Online; accessed 23-August-2010]"

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@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = "Wikipedia",
title = "Data validation --- Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia",
year = "2010",
url = "\url{http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Data_validation
note = "[Online; accessed 23-August-2010]"
}

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