validity checking

Routines in a data entry program that test the input for correct and reasonable conditions, such as account numbers falling within a range, numeric data being all digits, dates having a valid month, day and year, etc. Checking the spelling of proper names, if possible, can also be part of validity checking. See validate for a comparison of "validate" and "verify."

Errors Can Be Critical

It may seem like a dull part of the IT world, but data entry validation can be a very critical issue when there is insufficient validity checking of the input. In late 2001, a Japanese stockbroker erroneously placed a sell order for 610,000 shares of stock at 16 yen, when it should have been for 16 shares at 610,000 yen. Even though the error was caught two minutes after the order was placed, the broker's liability was estimated to be up to $100 million.

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References in periodicals archive

Field masking often is combined with validity checking. Software constrains data to meet previously defined criteria for a particular field; otherwise, the entry is not accepted and the cursor will not move from the field.

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The server is responsible for maintaining information that will enable clients to perform this validity checking. Detection-based schemes are so named because access to stale data is explicitly checked for and detected.

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Database administrators use several validity checking techniques against false positives, including a requirement that multiple users submit a possible spam message before the database adds a signature.

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