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Data Validation

The Data Validation tool is simply the most important part of the entire delivery process for HADDMS data from WinCan VX. This process is a key part of the post processing part of the pathway, but its use is very strongly recommended at an inspection level on the CCTV van.

The data validator is extremely quick to run and gives instant results. CCTV inspectors are advised to run the validator immediately after each inspection and fix any errors there and then while they are waiting to setup for the next inspection. Working in this way will save time in the long run.

The WinCan VX Data Validator returns 2 types of result:

• Errors - these are shown in pink in the validation results and are either errors that will result in a critical failure on upload to HADDMS, or will lead to bad results in the WinCan data processing system.

• Warnings - these shown in yellow and are generally logic errors and advice that something hasn’t been filled in when maybe it should be, or some values don’t make sense like the downstream end of the pipe has a higher height above sea level than the upstream end.

The validator can be run equally on sections, laterals and nodes.

To use the data validator in WinCan VX, first click on the ‘WinCan Validator’ button in the ‘Tools’ ribbon to launch the tool. You may need to select the ‘Validation’ view panel also:

Launching the WinCan Validator.

As soon as the validator is launched, your project will be validated for the currently selected view. The sections and laterals both run to the same validation rule set, but only sections are validated when you are in the section grid view, and laterals are validated when you are in the lateral grid view.

On the first launched screen, you will see (from top to bottom above):

• Checkboxes where:

  • You can decide if you want to only validate the filtered data in WinCan VX.

  • Hide Errors in the validation report.

  • Hide Warnings in the validation report.

• The current validation results by inspection record. You can expand the small plus sign on the left side to see the errors that have been reported in the selected inspection.

• The currently loaded validation rule set. There are 2 sets of rules available in this drop down list for continuous and point items:

  • Sections and Laterals:

    • Validation_DDMS_CD535_UK_ENG_SEC - The default loaded rules. These rules do not validate and sections or observations that are linked to inspection records that are read only. In other words, they were in the original imported data from the shapefiles at the beginning of the round-tripping process.

    • Validation_DDMS_CD535_UK_ENG_SEC_All_Assets - This contains the same rules as the default rule set, but the asset data is validated for all objects, including those with read-only inspection records. Why? Because it is common to import updated asset data into a project from GIS for assets that have not had a CCTV inspection, such as surface linear assets, and these extended validation rules will now validate that data.

  • Nodes and Region Items:

    • Validation_DDMS_CD535_UK_ENG_NOD - as for sections, but for nodes.

    • Validation_DDMS_CD535_UK_ENG_NOD_All_Assets - as for sections, but for nodes.

• The validator ‘Refresh’ button. This reruns the validator after you have made some fixes or edits somewhere.

Expanding the results for an inspection may look like this:

Expanded results for section inspections:

The results are split into 2 colours:

• Pink - Errors. Errors are on the whole data failures that will lead to be unable to upload the data into the HADDMS database at the end of the work. There are also some Errors that are driven by WinCan where our application cannot really function correctly without these fixes, or they are ‘logic’ errors.

• Yellow - Warnings. These are ‘advisory’ rules that have no real bearing on the data other than its quality.

The Errors and Warnings can be individually turned on or off using the check boxes at the top of the panel. It is advisable to reduce all Errors to zero at the point of creating an inspection, so as soon as the inspection is complete then run the validator and check for the Errors on this inspection. Fix the data problems before moving on to the next inspection.

All of the errors and warnings are numbered and follow the same naming convention for the text that is displayed to the user on screen. As an example, consider the line in the above image:

• 2036 - Section Inspection: ‘Camera’ is not specified.

What does this tell us?

• This is a warning because it is yellow.

• The rule number that is being checked here is 2036. it is very useful to make a note of this rule number if you ever need to call WinCan Europe for support on validation rules because it allow us to very quickly drill down onto the rule configuration.

• ‘Section Inspection’ tells us that the error is in the section inspection data. As described in The Section/Lateral Header and in The Node Header, the inspection data is on the right side of the section header, so this is where you must go to fix this problem.

• ‘Camera’ not specified tells us that the ‘Camera’ field in this inspection header is empty.

Fill it in and rerun the validator to see this rule cleared from the results.

The numbering system used in the validation rules is common for all HADDMS and WRc templates in WinCan VX. They are grouped together by the starting numbers (i.e. the 1000, 2000, 3000 numbers etc) and the numbering convention is the same for sections, laterals and nodes:

Rules
1,000 Numbers Asset attribute errors.	The error is in the asset data - the data on the left in the header:
2,000 Numbers Asset inspection errors.	The error is in the asset inspection data - the data on the right side in the header:
3,000 Numbers Job data errors.	The error is in the job information which you will find in the Project tab in WinCan VX: Hint - Because the WinCan Validator is an inspection driven machine, if there is an error in the job information, it will be repeated in the validator results for every inspection that is linked to that job, so fixing it once in the job data can clear a lot of errors in one go.
4,000 Numbers Project data errors.	The error is in the job information which you will find in the Project tab in WinCan VX: Hint - Because the WinCan Validator is an inspection driven machine, if there is an error in the project information, it will be repeated in the validator results for every inspection that is linked to the project, so fixing it once in the project data can clear a lot of errors in one go.
5,000 Numbers Observation errors.	The error is in the observation data:
6,000 Numbers Media errors.	The error is in the inspection media, most likely because there is a picture or video file attached in the data but the file does not exist inside the project folder:

The ‘Change view’ button on the validation panel changes the reporting style of the results but does not change the results that are shown. In the ‘normal’ view, we see the validation results for each inspection, but clicking on the ‘Change view’ button shows the list of errors/warnings found and which inspections they appear in:

Changing the results view.

This view can be very useful for fixing the ‘low hanging fruit’, or the errors that crop up many many times in a project because these errors can often be fixed in one go using the The Search & Replace Tool.

Clicking the ‘Change view’ button switches it back to the original view style.

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