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On Aug 24, 2004, at 11:02 AM, Michael Kay wrote:
>>
>> 2. "Semantic" or "business rule" validation
>>
>> "Syntactical" or "structural" validation is useful in
>> eliminating a certain
>> number of mechanical data entry errors, such as leaving out
>> required items
>> or putting strings in fields that require numbers (e.g. phone numbers,
>> dates, etc.)
>
> I was under the impression US phone numbers could be alphabetic?
Right, good point. 1-800-AAA-HELP etc. I wonder how many Web forms
would accept numbers in this form?
>
> I am not convinced that the distinction you are making is a real one.
> In the
> end, all the rules are essentially social rules.
>
Well, it is certainly a fuzzy distinction with a totally undecideable
area in the middle. I do think it is a useful *continuum*, with schema
validation being the obvious implementation choice for enforcing rules
at the structural end, and procedural code being the obvious choice at
the semantic end -- especially since most real organizations have
running code that defines their "semantic" business rules today, and
the challenge is to access it in a vendor / platform / language-neutral
manner.
I wouldn't want to argue the point with you, especially since I agree
that schema validation is all too often a solution looking for a
problem!
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