What does "DITA Map Validation and Completeness Check" check?

[ann.jensen]

Hi,
I am running the DITA Map Validation and Completeness Check against a map that has 76 topics in it. These topics have many xrefs and conrefs to other topics in the repo (Tridion Docs CMS).
When I run this check with none of the checkboxes selected on the DITA Map Validation and Completeness Check popup, it runs and has reached processing of over 7000 Resources already and is still running. Is this because it traces every xref and conref and validates each of those linked topics and their xrefs and conrefs?
I would like to better understand what is happening in the backend and if it is possible for me to still use this feature without it running for so long?
Any feedback appreciated,
Regards,
Ann

[Radu]

Hi Ann,
Yes, you understood precisely the problem, the validate and check for completeness follows every reference (direct from the DITA map or indirect from topics referenced in the DITA Map). And I think this is correct as the publishing engine attempts to do about the same thing when publishing and you may end up with 7000 HTML files in the output folder instead of 76.
Did you add profiling/filters in your DITA topics for those links/conrefs that you do not want followed? The "Validate and check for completeness" allows specifying a DITAVAL filter file to use when validating the DITA Map.
Regards,
Radu

[ann.jensen]

Hi Radu,
Thanks for you quick reply. There are very few conditions on the content and because we are using Tridion Docs ishconditions, I believe we can't use them for validating in Oxygen XML Author.
Is there a way to limit the checks to only return validation errors and not validation warnings? This would be helpful for my use case.
Regards,
Ann

[Radu]

Hi Ann,

There are very few conditions on the content and because we are using Tridion Docs ishconditions, I believe we can't use them for validating in Oxygen XML Author.

I'm not sure abotu that one, not sure if Tridion defines ishconditions as a proper profiling attribute...

Is there a way to limit the checks to only return validation errors and not validation warnings? This would be helpful for my use case.

Other than unchecking some of the validate and check for completion checkboxes, maybe you can wait for the validation to finish and then right click in the problems list and choose "Group by -> Severity".
Regards,
Radu

[ann.jensen]

Ok, I will try that approach.
One last question on this topic. Is there a way to batch apply Schematron rules (including my own custom rules) to validate all of the topics in a map, without having to run any other checks?
Thanks again,
Ann

[Radu]

Hi Ann,
If you had local disk files, you could batch validate files by using Oxygen's Project view. But with CMS files I guess the only way to batch validate with Schematron is to use "Validate and check for completeness" and specify a Schematron rules file there but this will perform validation with the other criteria as well.
Regards,
Radu

[ann.jensen]

Thanks for explaining Radu, I understand it better now.
Regards,
Ann