Best practice of data validation in enterprise application

Question

Hi, All.

I'm studying e-Commerce like web application. In one case study, I’m in trouble of mass data validation. What is the best practice of that in enterprise application? Thanks!

Here is one scenario: For a cargo system. There is a “Cargo” object, which contains a list of “Good” to be shipped with. Each “Good” have a string field, named “Category”, specifying what kind of “Good” it is. Such as “inflammable”, “Fragile”.

So, there are two chances for the validation to take place. The creation of the object. Or the storage in the database of the object. If we only validate at the storage stage, when some “Good” validation fails, the “Cargo” storage fails too, and the previously stored “Goods” need to be deleted. This is low efficient. If we also validate at the creation stage. There will be duplicated validation logic(a check of foreign key as I stores those “Category” in the database, and a check in the constructor).

Answer 1

If you are saving multiple records to the database, all the updates should be done at once in a single transaction. So you would validate ALL the objects before saving. If there was an issue during the save you could then rollback the transaction which rolls back all the database updates (ie you dont have to go back and manually delete records)

Ideally you should validate on the server, before saving data, the server validation should then propagate the validation messages back up to the User/UI. Validation on the Client/UI is also good in that its more responsive and reduces the overhead on the rest of the system.