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Validation

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Teacher’s notes included in the Notes Page

Flash activity. These activities are not editable.

Icons key:

This lesson will cover:

Ways of validating data

Revising different types of validation checks

Understanding data verification

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Database software

Ways of validating your data include:

Length checks – You can set the field sizeto only accept a set number of characters.

Format checks – Selecting correctdata types and setting a format willallow only certain types of data to be entered.

Range checks – You can create checks to see whether the data inputted falls within a certain range.

Presence check – Setting Requiredto ‘yes’ will ensure the field cannot beleft blank and data must be entered.

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Revision

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Verification

Two common types of data entry error are:

Automatic validation may not spot these. Verification is the process of manually checking that data matches its source. It may involve:

Transposition – 2 digits are entered in the wrong order e.g. 81 is typed instead of 18.

Transcription – a different character is typed in altogether.

Double entry – Data is entered twice and the two copies compared for differences.Proofreading – Data is manually checked against the original.

What advantages/disadvantages might these have?