Benefit: Data Consistency and Data Security

Data consistency is the basic foundation of application development in every respect. Therefore especially the import of unknown external data is a security-critical process. These data become part of the application, and trigger changes in the state of the application; they are processed in different operations and later possibly even made persistent, e.g. in databases. After that they become part of the output data. This is why all input information must be examined closely in order to be able to safeguard the consistency and correct processing of the data.

Necessary Validation

Generally, the following basic validation is necessary:

• Workflow validation: Is this request valid with respect to time and state?
• Structural validation: Are the type and amount of the input data as expected?
• Syntax validation: Are individual data correct with respect to existence, type or length?
• Domain validation: Are the data contents within the specified domains?
• Business Validation Rules: Are the modified data objects consistent and their relations to other objects correct?

Automated Security

Data output can be a problem, too, if you think of the issue of cross site scripting with interactive browser applications for example. They only way to eliminate this problem is exact validation. The zen Platform has an integrated multilevel validation which supports automated data security on all levels. During development with the zen Developer only data structure, datatypes and business specific business validation rules will be defined - the zen Platform then makes sure that an automatic validation is performed across all levels.

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