Testing the delivered solution against stakeholder needs and agreed quality levels (verification, by contrast, checks the build against the design). Its strategy defines measurable acceptance criteria per requirement, test types, entry and exit criteria, roles and sign-off.
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Validation in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Stakeholder
Anyone with a stake in a system, whether an individual, a team, an organisation or a whole category of them.
- Verification
Checking, as part of design validation, that what was built matches the specification: prerequisites met and configuration in line with the physical design. Validation instead tests against requirements.
- Requirement
A need that is stated clearly enough to be measured or tested, leaves no ambiguity and is essential for the result to be accepted.
Related terms
- Acceptance criterion
A testable condition with a clear pass or fail outcome that a validation test uses to prove the finished solution meets one requirement, for example losing no more than 15 minutes of data. Loose phrases such as 'performs well' can't be checked this way.
- Assumption
A statement the design accepts as true without evidence, for example that workloads will grow no faster than an agreed rate. Each needs an owner and a validation date, since an assumption left unchecked counts as a risk.
- BOM
Bytes placed first in a text file to signal its encoding. Fine-tuning data should be saved as UTF-8 with a BOM, keeping each file below 512 MB; ASCII, UTF-16 or ISO-8859-1 files risk failing validation.
- Bronze layer
The entry stage of a medallion design. Incoming data is stored unchanged, added to bit by bit, and retained so downstream stages can be reproduced, with validation in silver and enrichment in gold.
- COALESCE
A SQL function that picks out the first non-NULL argument. CEL validation rejects a STRING cast inside the call, so a service policy function hands it the VARIANT field and casts what comes back.
- CRL
Certificate revocation list: a CA publishes the certificates it has withdrawn at a CRL distribution point. Certificate-based authentication downloads that list and rejects any revoked user certificate; if there is no CRL, no revocation check happens unless validation is set as required.
- CRL
Where a CA has cancelled certificates before they lapse, it records them here. VCF Operations looks at its CRL tab solely when standard validation is enabled, and NSX Manager can bring such lists in or retrieve them.
- Custom analyzer (Content Understanding)
Built on top of a base analyzer like prebuilt-document, this is where you add a field schema, methods and validation instructions of your own in Content Understanding.