Validate node

You can check the message against one or more of message domain, message model, or message. The property is checked only if you select its corresponding check box, which means that a property that contains an empty string can be compared.

You can check the content of the message by giving a value to the Validate property. Validation takes place if the Validate property is set to a value other than None, which is the default value.

For validation failures to be returned to the Validate node from the parser, set the Failure Action property to either Exception or Exception List. Otherwise, validation failures are just logged.

If all the specified checks pass, the message is propagated to the Match terminal of the node.

If any of the checks fail, the message is propagated to the Failure terminal. If the Failure terminal is not connected to some failure handling processing, an exception is generated.

The Validate node replaces the Check node, which is deprecated in WebSphere® Message Broker Version 6.0 and subsequent releases. The Validate node works in the same way as the Check node, but it has additional Validation properties to allow the validation of message content by parsers that support that capability.

The Validate node is contained in the Validation drawer of the palette, and is represented in the IBM® Integration Toolkit by the following icon:

Use the Validate node to confirm that a message has the correct message template properties, and has valid content, before propagating the message to the rest of the flow. Subsequent nodes can then rely on the message being correct, without doing their own error checking.

You can also use the Validate node to ensure that the message is routed appropriately through the message flow. For example, configure the node to direct a message that requests stock purchases through a different route from that required for a message that requests stock sales.

Another routing example is the receipt of electronic messages from your staff at your head office. These messages are used for multiple purposes (for example, to request technical support or stationery, or to advise you about new customer leads). These messages can be processed automatically because your staff complete a standard form. If you want these messages to be processed separately from other messages that are received, use the Validate node to ensure that only staff messages that have a specific message type are processed by this message flow.

When you have put an instance of the Validate node into a message flow, you can configure it. For more information, see Configuring a message flow node. The properties of the node are displayed in the Properties view. All mandatory properties for which you must enter a value (those that do not have a default value defined) are marked with an asterisk.

The terminals of the Validate node are described in the following table.

The following tables describe the properties of the node. The column headed M indicates whether the property is mandatory (marked with an asterisk if you must enter a value when no default is defined); the column headed C indicates whether the property is configurable (you can change the value when you add the message flow to the BAR file to deploy it).

The Description properties of the Validate node are described in the following table.

The Validate node Basic properties are described in the following table.

The Validation properties of the Validate node are described in the following table.

If you are using the XMLNSC, DFDL, DataObject, SOAP, MRM, or IDOC parser and want to validate the body of messages against the message model, select the required validation properties on the Validation tab. For more details, see Validating messages and Validation properties.