The Data Validation Engine (DVE) is a configuration-driven data validation library created and used by NHS England. It lets users define validation rules once and apply them across multiple dataset collections - supporting consistent, accurate data checks.
The DVE offers:
- SQL configuration-based validations
- Format normalization to Parquet for a unified data representation
- Data modelling and typecasting
- Business-rule validations executed on supported backends such as Spark and DuckDB, with the option to add custom backends
- Validate and enforce referential integrity checks with minimal configuration
- Deriving new fields and entities
- Clear validation reporting, including summary insights and record-level error messages
As mentioned above, the DVE is "configuration driven" which means the majority of development for you as a user will be building a JSON document to describe how the data will be validated. The JSON document is known as a dischema (data ingest schema) file and example files can be accessed here
Please see the documentation here
Before creating new issues, please check to see if the same bug/feature has been created already. Where a duplicate is created, the ticket will be closed and referenced to an existing issue.
If you have spotted a bug with the DVE then please raise an issue here
If you have feature request then please follow the same process whilst using the "Feature request template".
Below is a list of features that we would like to implement or have been requested.
| Feature | Release Version | Released? |
|---|---|---|
| Open source release | 0.1.0 | Yes |
| Uplift to Python 3.11 | 0.2.0 | Yes |
| Uplift Pyspark to 3.5 | 0.8.0 | Yes |
| Allow DVE to run on Python 3.12+ | 0.8.0 | Yes |
| Upgrade to Pydantic 2.0 | 0.9.0 | Yes |
| Upgrade DuckDB to v1.4 | 0.10.0 | Yes |
| Uplift Pyspark to 4.0+ | TBA | No |
| Polars upgrade to v1+ | TBA | No |
| DuckDB upgrade to v1.5+ | TBA | No |
| Python 3.13 & 3.14 upgrade | TBA | No |
| Create a more user friendly interface for building and modifying dischema files | TBA | No |
If you are interested in getting any of the unreleased features listed above available, then please read the Contributing section and then submit us a pull request.
Please see guidance here
This codebase is released under the MIT License. This covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation.
Any HTML or Markdown documentation is © Crown copyright and available under the terms of the Open Government 3.0 licence.