ValidationEngine

ValidationEngine is the single entry point consuming applications use to run a rule set against a policy or claims record. It resolves the named rule set through RuleSetLoader, evaluates every rule in declaration order without short-circuiting, and aggregates the outcomes into one ValidationResult so callers can present all failures at once. It never throws for a business validation failure — failures are data, not exceptions — and it mutates no caller state. Instances hold the resolved rule set and an accumulating result buffer, so they are not safe to share across threads or requests.

Purpose

• Runs every rule in a named rule set against a supplied record and returns the complete set of failures and warnings in one pass, so operators in SAIF.Claims.Intake correct all problems in a single round trip.
• Enforces the severity split between blocking failures and acceptable warnings described in BR-004.
• Provides the jurisdiction-aware evaluation path required by BR-002 by threading the caller's IValidationContext into every rule evaluation.

Context

• Namespace: SAIF.Framework.Validation
• Assembly/package: SAIF.Framework.Validation (NuGet package SAIF.Framework.Validation, assembly SAIF.Framework.Validation.dll)

Public members

Member	Signature	Purpose
ValidationEngine	Public Sub New(ByVal ruleSetName As String, ByVal context As IValidationContext)	Binds the engine to a named rule set and the caller's context; throws ArgumentNullException when either argument is missing.
RuleSetName	Public ReadOnly Property RuleSetName As String	Name of the rule set this engine evaluates, used in log entries and batch error output to identify which rules ran.
Context	Public ReadOnly Property Context As IValidationContext	Jurisdiction, effective date, and user identity supplied by the host application and passed to each rule.
Validate	Public Function Validate(ByVal record As Object) As ValidationResult	Evaluates every rule in the rule set against the record and returns the aggregated failures and warnings.
ValidateField	Public Function ValidateField(ByVal record As Object, ByVal fieldName As String) As ValidationResult	Evaluates only the rules targeting the named field, used for per-field feedback as an operator tabs through a claim entry screen.
Reload	Public Sub Reload()	Discards the cached rule set and forces the next evaluation to re-read the rule set XML from disk.

Inherited public members

Members in this section are inherited from ValidationComponentBase in SAIF.Framework.Core. They are available on this type through inheritance.

Member	Signature	Purpose	Origin
ComponentName	Public Overridable ReadOnly Property ComponentName As String	Stable identifier written to the framework trace log so a failing evaluation can be traced to the component that produced it.†	SAIF.Framework.Core — ValidationComponentBase
WriteTrace	Protected Sub WriteTrace(ByVal message As String)	Emits a trace entry tagged with the component name when framework tracing is enabled; does nothing when tracing is off.†	SAIF.Framework.Core — ValidationComponentBase
IsInitialized	Public ReadOnly Property IsInitialized As Boolean	Reports whether framework initialization completed, allowing callers to detect use before startup configuration ran.†	SAIF.Framework.Core — ValidationComponentBase

Behavioral notes

• Validate evaluates all rules even after a failure, so a returned ValidationResult contains every failure the record produced rather than only the first.
• Rule set resolution happens on the first call to Validate or ValidateField, not in the constructor, so a missing rule set file surfaces as a RuleSetNotFoundException at evaluation time.
• ValidateField returns an empty passing result when no rule targets the named field; it does not signal an error for an unknown field name.
• Reload clears the shared RuleSetLoader cache, which affects every engine instance in the process, not just this one.*
• Evaluation order follows the order rules appear in the rule set XML, which lets later rules assume earlier format checks already ran.*

Constraints and usage notes

• Create one instance per request or per batch record. The accumulating result buffer makes concurrent use of a single instance unsafe.
• Do not pass data-reader or connection-bound objects as record. Rules expect a fully materialized object with readable properties.
• The IValidationContext implementation must return a non-null jurisdiction code; jurisdiction-scoped rules treat a missing code as a failure of BR-002.
• Rule set XML changes require Reload or an application recycle before they take effect.

Note: Statements marked with * were inferred from code structure, naming conventions, or contextual evidence where direct confirmation was not available in source artifacts. Statements marked with ** could not be confirmed; treat as unknown until verified. Statements marked with † were retrieved from dependency library documentation via the Legends CLI RAG service. They describe inherited behavior from the indicated origin library and should be verified if the dependency version changes.

Sources

• src/SAIF.Framework.Validation/ValidationEngine.vb
• src/SAIF.Framework.Validation/RuleSetLoader.vb
• src/SAIF.Framework.Validation/IValidationContext.vb
• src/SAIF.Framework.Validation/SAIF.Framework.Validation.vbproj