Validation Documents

All validation processes are triggered by execution points, points in the running application to be validated, or during the rendering or manipulation of content such as method invocations, property changes, or the firing of events. All execution points are associated with a target component, a component that serves as the starting point for the validation.

The most common execution point is the actual rendering of a GUI or document. The validation process associated with this point traverses the hierarchy that comprises the GUI or document and validates each element in that hierarchy. In this case, the target component is typically (but not limited to) the root GUI component while the event can be a method invocation on that component (e.g. java.awt.Window.setVisible(true). Once the validation is started, each component in the hierarchy is traversed and validated against it's own rules. The ACTF Validation Documents define the target component types for a specific model and their validation rules.