Dabble operates on the principle that no data should ever be rejected without a human actively deciding to do so. As such, even if data entered into an application does not make sense, it will be stored.

In general, the only situation where data entered doesn’t make sense is when a field is configured for a particular type of value that limits what data is acceptable:

• Number values, Money values and Duration values should only be numbers (with a currency for money and a unit for durations).

• Date and time values should only be calendar dates (with or without a time).

If you configure a field to use one of these types of values, and Dabble finds existing data that doesn’t make sense, it will mark the entry containing the data as invalid. Similarly, if a user enters new data that doesn’t make sense, the entry will also be marked invalid.

Marking the entries as invalid doesn’t affect the data in any way. It just means that users will be informed so that they can choose how to deal with the problem.

When an application has invalid data, Dabble will put a link on the category bar with an exclamation mark and text indicating how many invalid entries there are. Clicking this link will create a new view with a special filter to show only invalid entries.

Dabble will also display a warning in the entry editor when you edit an entry that has invalid data. The warning will tell you which field has an invalid value, and the value itself will be highlighted in red.