13 Adding Validation to Your Integrated Excel Workbook

This chapter describes how to provide server-side and data entry validation for your integrated Excel workbook, how to report errors such as validation failures and data conflict, and how to configure error reports using custom error handler.

This chapter includes the following sections:

• About Adding Validation to an Integrated Excel Workbook

• Using the Status Viewer to Report Error Messages to End Users

• Providing Data Entry Validation for an Integrated Excel Workbook

• Providing Server-Side Validation for an Integrated Excel Workbook

• Providing a Row-by-Row Status on an ADF Table Component

• Adding Detail to Error Messages in an Integrated Excel Workbook

• Handling Data Conflicts When Uploading Data from a Workbook

13.1 About Adding Validation to an Integrated Excel Workbook

You configure server-side and data entry validation for the Fusion web application and the integrated Excel workbook to make use of the validation options offered by the ADF Model layer, ADF Desktop Integration, and Microsoft Excel. In addition to these validation options, you can make use of components in ADF Desktop Integration to return error messages from the Fusion web application, to provide status on the results of component actions, and to manage errors that may occur when data modification in an integrated Excel workbook conflicts with data hosted by the Fusion web application.

Adding validation to your integrated Excel workbook gives you several benefits. You can create validation rules in your Fusion web application and in your integrated Excel workbook to validate data entry by the end user.

13.1.1 Integrated Excel Workbook Validation Use Cases and Examples

Validation rules protect the server by preventing the upload of invalid data. ADF Desktop Integration provides both data entry validation and server-side validation capabilities. Figure 13-1 shows an example of server-side validation from the Summit sample application's EditCustomers-DT.xlsx workbook where an invalid zip code (12345x) fails an entity validation rule. This failure appears in the Status Viewer entry for the row that contains the invalid zip code.

Figure 13-1 Status Viewer Displaying Entity Validation Rule Failure

Figure 13-2 shows an example of a data entry validation failure from the same workbook where no value appears in a cell that requires a value.

Figure 13-2 Data Entry Validation Message

13.1.2 Additional Functionality for Adding Validation to an Integrated Excel Workbook

After you have applied validation rules in your integrated Excel workbook, you may find that you need to add additional functionality to configure your workbook. The following sections describe other functionality that you can use:

• Testing integrated Excel workbook: Before publishing and deploying your integrated Excel workbook, you must test it. For more information, see Chapter 14, "Testing Your Integrated Excel Workbook."

• Publishing and deploying integrated Excel workbook: The final step after you design and validate your integrated Excel workbook is to publish and deploy it. For more information, see Chapter 15, "Deploying Your Integrated Excel Workbook."

13.2 Using the Status Viewer to Report Error Messages to End Users

The Status Viewer displays information to end users in Excel's task pane. End users can use the information that appears to review and correct errors at the same time. Information that the Status Viewer always displays includes the worksheet-level status of the current integrated worksheet. In addition, if the worksheet includes an ADF Table component and the currently selected cell is a row in the ADF Table component, the Status Viewer displays the status of the row.

Information about the result of action set invocation also appears in the Status Viewer. For example, an end user enters a value that violates a declarative validation rule in the Fusion web application's ADF Model layer. When the end user attempts to upload the change, a failure is reported for the failed row. In this scenario, the Status Viewer appears and displays a message about the validation failure.

Figure 13-3 shows the Status Viewer that appears in the EditCustomers-DT.xlsx workbook when an end user enters a zip code (12345x) that fails an entity validation rule defined in the Fusion web application's ADF Model layer. Selecting a cell anywhere in the table row that contains the validation failure causes the validation failure message to appear in the Status Viewer. The worksheet-level status that appears in the Status Viewer in Figure 13-3 indicates that the most recent action set from this worksheet completed successfully.

Figure 13-3 Status Viewer

Integrated Excel workbooks that you create using this release of ADF Desktop Integration display the Status Viewer ribbon command in the Excel ribbon by default, as shown in Figure 13-4.

Figure 13-4 Status Viewer Ribbon Command in Excel Ribbon

End users click the Status Viewer ribbon command to display or hide the Status Viewer in Excel's task pane. By default, the Status Viewer appears automatically when integrated Excel workbooks encounter errors at runtime. You can configure this behavior for integrated Excel workbooks created using earlier releases so that they automatically display the Status Viewer when errors occur. For more information, see Section 13.2.1, "How to Manage the Automatic Display of the Status Viewer."

You add the Status Viewer ribbon command to the Excel ribbon by adding the ToggleStatusViewer workbook action, as described in Section 9.3.1, "How to Define a Workbook Ribbon Command for the Runtime Ribbon Tab." For more information about workbook actions, see Section A.14, "Workbook Actions and Properties."

Although you add the Status Viewer ribbon command the Excel ribbon as a workbook command, the Status Viewer is worksheet specific and displays information for the integrated Excel worksheet that is in focus. If your end users navigate to a non-integrated worksheet and click the Status Viewer ribbon command, a message appears that tells the end user the Status Viewer cannot be used in that worksheet.

13.2.1 How to Manage the Automatic Display of the Status Viewer

You set the value of the AutoDisplayStatusViewerEnabled workbook property to True or False to manage the automatic display of the Status Viewer in Excel's task pane.

Before you begin:

It may be helpful to have an understanding of the Status Viewer provided by ADF Desktop Integration. For more information, see Section 13.2, "Using the Status Viewer to Report Error Messages to End Users."

You may also find it helpful to understand the functionality that can be added using other ADF Desktop Integration features. For more information, see Section 13.1.2, "Additional Functionality for Adding Validation to an Integrated Excel Workbook."

To manage the automatic display of the Status Viewer:

1. Open the integrated Excel workbook.

2. From the Excel Ribbon, in the Oracle ADF tab, click Workbook Properties.

3. In the Edit Workbook Properties dialog, expand Behavior and set the AutoDisplayStatusViewerEnabled property appropriately:

   • True: Status Viewer automatically appears when an error occurs.

   • False: End user must click the Status Viewer ribbon command in the Excel ribbon to display the Status Viewer.

4. Click OK.

13.3 Providing Data Entry Validation for an Integrated Excel Workbook

ADF Desktop Integration automatically performs basic data entry validation after end users modify cells bound to ADF components. Basic data entry validation includes verifying the expected data type (for example, user entered a number for a numerical attribute) and that required fields are not empty. ADF Desktop Integration performs this validation as soon as end users leave the cell.

Metadata from the ADF Model layer is used to perform basic data entry validation. No additional workbook configuration is needed. You can disable this validation using the Compatibility.DataEntryValidationEnabled workbook properties described in Section 13.3.1.1, "How to Enable or Disable ADF Desktop Integration Data Entry Validation." ADF Desktop Integration enables basic data validation by default.

ADF Desktop Integration performs additional validation during upload. For more information, see Section 13.4, "Providing Server-Side Validation for an Integrated Excel Workbook."

13.3.1 Providing Data Entry Validation Using ADF Desktop Integration

ADF Desktop Integration performs data entry validation to verify that:

• Mandatory fields contain a value. ADF Desktop Integration reports a validation failure if an Excel cell that contains an ADF component which requires a mandatory value (for example, ADF Input Text component) is blank.

• The correct data type is entered. If, for example, you enter a string ("Bob") in an input field where the required data type is a date or a number, ADF Desktop Integration reports a validation failure.

ADF Desktop Integration performs the above types of validation without making a request to the Fusion web application.

ADF Desktop Integration performs data entry validation on the ADF Input Text, ADF Input Date and ADF Table components. It does not perform data entry validation on read-only cells, label or headers cells, locked cells or cells in the columns described in Section 7.12, "Special Columns in the ADF Table Component." It also does not perform data entry validation on cells in the ADF Read-only Table or ADF List of Values components.

Data entry validation performed by ADF Desktop Integration identifies failures upon editing a single cell or multiple cells (simultaneously). Examples of edits that span multiple cells include a selection of a column in an ADF Table component or an end user pasting one or more rows of data into in an ADF Table component. ADF Desktop Integration performs data entry validation only after an end user edits a single cell or multiple cells and leaves edit mode for the cell(s). If a validation failure occurs, ADF Desktop Integration applies a red border to the cell that failed validation after the end user exits edit mode by pressing Enter, tabbing away, or selecting a different cell.

Once ADF Desktop Integration reports a validation failure, the end user can view a non-modal popup message by selecting the cell without entering edit mode. This non-modal popup message describes the validation failure and may suggest an action to resolve the validation failure. It remains visible as long as the end user selects the cell and the validation failure is present. No non-modal popup message appears if end users select multiple cells with validation failures. In ADF Table component cells, a message also appears in the Status column to indicate that a row contains at least one cell with a validation failure. ADF Table component actions such as Download and Upload clear this latter message. The ADF Table component's Download action also clears the red border around cells that contain validation failures. For more information about the Status column, see Section 7.12, "Special Columns in the ADF Table Component."

The Status Viewer displays a message for a row with cells that contain validation failures. It displays this message ("Row contains invalid pending changes") until the end user resolves the validation failures. In addition to data entry validation errors, the Status Viewer might display other messages, such as failure messages from the last Upload operation. For more information about the Status Viewer, see Section 13.2, "Using the Status Viewer to Report Error Messages to End Users."

Figure 13-1 shows a cell with a data entry validation failure in the Summit sample application's EditCustomers-DT.xlsx workbook. The end user has not entered a value in an ADF Table component cell that requires a value. The non-modal popup message and the Status Viewer both display information about this failure.

Figure 13-5 ADF Desktop Integration Data Entry Validation

ADF Desktop Integration applies a red border to a cell that fails validation until the end user resolves the issue that causes the validation failure. If you or an end user set a cell border to red, ADF Desktop Integration does not consider the cell invalid until a validation error occurs (missing mandatory value, for example). To prevent visual confusion for end users, avoid the use of red borders on cells in your integrated Excel workbook so that its use is reserved to ADF Desktop Integration reporting validation failures.

Validation failures do not prevent end users from continuing to edit or enter data in the integrated Excel workbook nor does the presence of data entry validation failures prevent the upload of data from the integrated Excel workbook.

Note:

If an end user modifies a large number of cells at the same time, data validation can take a significant amount of time. In such cases, a progress bar may appear to provide the end user with an indication of progress. If the end user clicks Cancel, the validation stops at that point.

13.3.1.1 How to Enable or Disable ADF Desktop Integration Data Entry Validation

Integrated Excel workbooks enable ADF Desktop Integration data entry validation by default. You enable or disable ADF Desktop Integration data entry validation by configuring the DataEntryValidationEnabled workbook property, described in Section A.16, "ADF Desktop Integration Compatibility Properties."

Before you begin:

It may be helpful to have an understanding of ADF Desktop Integration data entry validation. For more information, see Section 13.3.1, "Providing Data Entry Validation Using ADF Desktop Integration."

You may also find it helpful to understand the functionality that can be added using other ADF Desktop Integration features. For more information, see Section 13.1.2, "Additional Functionality for Adding Validation to an Integrated Excel Workbook."

To enable or disable ADF Desktop Integration Data Entry Validation:

1. Open the integrated Excel workbook.

2. From the Excel Ribbon, in the Oracle ADF tab, click Workbook Properties.

3. In the Edit Workbook Properties dialog, expand Behavior > Compatibility and set the DataEntryValidationEnabled property appropriately:

   • True: Enables ADF Desktop Integration data entry validation.

   • False: Disables ADF Desktop Integration data entry validation.

4. Click OK.

13.3.2 Providing Data Validation Using Excel

You can use Excel's data validation features to control the type of data or the values that end users enter into a cell. These features allow you to restrict data entry to a certain range of dates, limit choices by using a list, or ensure that only positive whole numbers are entered in a cell. For example, you could configure the ZipCode field in the EditWarehouseInventory-DT.xlsx workbook so that users can enter only whole numbers in the cells of this field.

If you apply custom validation to cells that render lists of values, the validation is propagated when ADF Desktop Integration populates cells with lists of values at runtime. Note, however, that ADF Desktop Integration overwrites at runtime any custom validation applied for components with lists of values. This is because ADF Desktop Integration applies its own list-constraint validation, which is invoked at runtime. For more information about lists of values, see Chapter 8, "Working with Lists of Values."

For more information about data validation in Excel, see Excel's documentation.

13.4 Providing Server-Side Validation for an Integrated Excel Workbook

ADF Desktop Integration uses the validation rules that the ADF Model layer sets for a binding's attributes. Data that the end user enters or edits in one of the ADF Desktop Integration components, such as the ADF Table component, can be validated against set rules and conditions in the Fusion web application's ADF Model layer. For general information about defining validation rules in Oracle ADF, see the "Defining Validation and Business Rules Declaratively" chapter in Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.

For information about adding ADF Model layer validation, see the "Defining Validation Rules in the ADF Model Layer" section in Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.

Note:

ADF Desktop Integration does not support server-side validation warnings. Validation warnings, set for rules defined in the Fusion web application, are not displayed by the integrated Excel workbook.

13.5 Providing a Row-by-Row Status on an ADF Table Component

The Status Viewer, described in Section 13.2, "Using the Status Viewer to Report Error Messages to End Users," appears by default if errors occur during the attempted invocation of the following ADF Table component actions:

• DeleteFlaggedRows

• Upload

• UploadAllOrNothing

• DoubleClickActionSet invoked from an ADF Table component's column

End users can view a status message in the Status Viewer for each row in the ADF Table component by selecting a cell in the ADF Table component row that interests them.

In addition, the ADF Table component populates the _ADF_StatusColumn column with the status for each row following the invocation of the ADF Table component action. For example, it populates the _ADF_StatusColumn column with the upload status for each row following the invocation of the ADF Table component's Upload action.

Figure 13-6 shows rows in an ADF Table component where the values in those rows have been changed, as indicated by the upward pointing arrows in the Changed column. In the ZipCode column, a value 12345x has been entered in one row where 12345 or 12345-6789 is expected.

Figure 13-6 ADF Table Component with Changed Rows Before Upload

Figure 13-7 shows the same rows in the ADF Table component after invocation of the ADF Table component's Upload action. The ADF Table component populates the _ADF_StatusColumn column (labeled Status in this example at runtime) with a message indicating whether the row updated successfully or not. If a row fails to update, the Status Viewer appears automatically, as shown in Figure 13-7 and displays a message describing why the row failed to update.

Note:

A number of columns have been hidden in order to display the Status Viewer in Figure 13-7.

Figure 13-7 ADF Table Component with Changed Rows After Upload

By default, the _ADF_StatusColumn column's DoubleClickActionSet is configured to invoke the ADF Table component's DisplayRowErrors action. When end users double-click a row in this column at runtime, the ADF Table component invokes the DisplayRowErrors action. This action displays a dialog with a list of errors for that row if errors exist. If no errors exist, the dialog displays a message to indicate that no errors occurred. Figure 13-8 shows the dialog that appears if the end user double-clicks the cell in Figure 13-7 that displays Update failed in the Status column.

Figure 13-8 Dialog Displaying Row Error Message

For more information about the _ADF_StatusColumn column, see Section 7.12, "Special Columns in the ADF Table Component."

13.6 Adding Detail to Error Messages in an Integrated Excel Workbook

You can configure your Fusion web application to report errors using a custom error handler to provide more detail to the error messages displayed to end users in an integrated Excel workbook.

To implement this functionality, the custom error handler must override the getDetailedDisplayMessage method to return a DCErrorMessage object. At runtime, ADF Desktop Integration detects the custom error handler and invokes the getHtmlText method on the DCErrorMessage object. ADF Desktop Integration includes the HTML returned by the getHtmlText method in the error message list as detail.

For more information about creating a custom error handler, see the "Customizing Error Handling" section of Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.

13.7 Handling Data Conflicts When Uploading Data from a Workbook

If one of your end users (User X) makes changes to a row of data downloaded from a Fusion web application to an Excel workbook, and another end user (User Y) in a different session modifies the same row in the Fusion web application after User X downloads the row, User X may encounter an error while uploading the modified row, as the changes conflict with those that User Y made. Depending on the configuration of your Fusion web application, User X may receive RowInconsistentException type error messages. For information about how to configure your Fusion web application to protect your data, see the "How to Protect Against Losing Simultaneously Updated Data" section in Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.

To resolve this conflict in the integrated Excel workbook, User X needs to download the most recent version of data from the Fusion web application. However, invoking the ADF Table component's Download action causes the component to refresh all data that the component hosts in the Excel workbook. This may overwrite other changes that User X made that do not generate conflict error messages. To resolve this scenario, you can expose the ADF Table component's DownloadFlaggedRows action. When invoked, this action downloads data only for the rows that the end user flags for download. Using this action, User X can resolve the conflict issues and upload his modified data.

Chapter 16, "Using an Integrated Excel Workbook Across Multiple Web Sessions" provides information about using an integrated Excel workbook across multiple sessions. For information about flagging rows, see Section 7.12.1, "Row Flagging in an ADF Table Component." For information about invoking component actions, see Section 9.2.2, "How to Invoke Component Actions in an Action Set." For more information about the components that the ADF Table component supports, see Section A.11, "ADF Table Component Properties and Actions."

13.7.1 How to Configure a Workbook to Handle Data Conflicts When Uploading Data

You specify a row-specific attribute of the tree binding for the RowData.ChangeIndicatorAttribute property to determine whether a row has been modified by another user since the row was last downloaded by the ADF Table component.

To configure a workbook to handle data conflicts:

1. Open the integrated Excel workbook.

2. Select any cell of the ADF Table component and click Edit Properties in the Oracle ADF tab.

3. In Edit Component: ADF Table dialog, for the RowData.ChangeIndicatorAttribute property, specify the row-specific attribute of the tree binding that you use to determine whether a row has been modified by another user since the row was last downloaded by the ADF Table component in your integrated Excel workbook.

4. Click OK.

13.7.2 What Happens at Runtime: How Data Conflicts Are Handled

The ADF Table component caches the original value of the row-specific attribute of the tree binding that you specified as a value for RowData.ChangeIndicatorAttribute when it invokes the RowDownSync action. When the ADF Table component invokes the RowUpSync action, it checks if the value of the binding hosted by the Fusion web application and the original value cached by the ADF Table component differ. If they differ, it indicates data conflict, as changes have been made to the value of the binding hosted by the Fusion web application since the ADF Table component downloaded the value of the binding.