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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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