Hey all,

I'm playing with the Hibernate Validator tools, and it appears that presently it only supports annotations.

Since validation is much more a business-specific scenario rather than code specific, this surprises me. Are there other alternatives outside of annotation for using hibernate validations (rather than commons-validator or some of the others)?

My expectation would be either something like User.hbv.xml (hibernate validation xml file) that can be digested and used in various XSLT/programmed editors so business users can modify the validation rules as necessary (rather than the coders through annotation). Or, alternatively, using something like Jboss Rules as a 'validation rules engine' (not sure if that is a good idea or not).

Feedback on alternatives please...

If your user all of the sudden decides that a previously nullable property is now not null, you are in big big trouble if you let a business user just update an XML file. What about the existing data? They probably deserve some adjustment.

Is there a way to create a report/list of the presently implemented validations (i.e. not troll through java code and re-document)?

JavaDoc is I guess addressing your concerns