Validation of database properties

When EDC is enabled, the Vocabulary elements - Entity, Attribute, and Association - each have additional properties that can be entered by the user, or inferred from database metadata. Corticon EDC validates these Vocabulary-to-Database mappings, and displays error conditions in a window. There are three aspects to the database validation function:

Dynamic Validation

Corticon Studio validates against imported database metadata as property values change in a Vocabulary. For example, for a database-persistent entity, if you specify a table name that does not exist in the database metadata, the system posts a validation message in the Problems View. Studio creates other error and warning validation messages depending on the severity of the issue detected, such as:

You select a property value, then re-import metadata, only to find that the selected value no longer exists in the database schema.

Warnings are also created for "soft" errors, such as:

If you designate a Vocabulary entity as datastore persistent, the system is unable to infer which database table best matches the entity name, dynamic validation issues a warning message.

If the system is unable to unambiguously determine the join expression for a given association, the association is flagged as a warning until you select one of the allowable values.

Note: Dynamic validation is always performed against the imported copy of database metadata. You must ensure that metadata is imported into the Vocabulary whenever the database schema is modified.

On-Demand Validation

In addition to dynamic validation, Corticon Studio provides the Vocabulary menu action Validate Mappings so that you can validate the Vocabulary, as a whole, against the database schema. Unlike dynamic validation, on-demand validation is performed against the actual schema so it is considered. the definitive test of Vocabulary mappings.

Validation at Deployment

Corticon Server leverages on-demand validation functionality whenever a decision service is deployed. If Corticon Server detects a problem, it throws an exception and prevents deployment.

Note: Deployment-time validation check can be turned off in a server property file in (CcServer.properties) to "force" deployment despite mapping errors if circumstances warrant it.