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Required field processing is a real time check within the user interface and not a validation that is processed though the PDC engine. Its purpose is to prevent users from setting up partial entities. Conversely, validations can check for empty fields but still allow for the partial entity to be saved in the system. As explained in the above section, though the Tax Status was not a required field but it still might be an important field. In this case, instead of making it a required field, you can set up a validation as ‘tax status = null’. If a new entity is set up without entering a value for the Tax Status field, PDC will create the shell entity in the database with a partial release level and generate an exception for the tax status field. Conversely, if the (required field) entity name was left blank, i.e. that is without adding a validation, then you cannot even submit the request in the first place.
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Recall that the required field option is a real time, UI based process and not an engine based validation. As such, it will not prevent ETL (uploader, message stream etc., and so on) processes from loading a partial entity into the system. If your firm uses required fields and relies heavily on an ETL process to insert new entities, then the current best practice is to add a field level validation for each required field, for example ‘Entity Name = null’. This will not prevent the partial entity from being loaded to the system but it will generate an exception and set the entity release level accordingly.