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Peter's Data Entry Suite ("DES") is the second generation of ASP.NET web page validation, greatly expanding upon the concept. The native ASP.NET Validation controls are very limited, causing you to write custom code and hacks. In many cases, there is no way to enhance it to get the features you want. DES overcomes these limitations, saving you development time and allowing you to build the best UI for your sites.

Validation involves the rules to evaluate data entry fields and a user interface that communicates errors clearly to the user. DES handles both with great attention to detail and completeness.

Here are the advantages of using DES for your validation:

• 27 validator controls. (The native framework only has 5.) Details
• More advanced client-side and server-side validation support.
• The ability to combine the rules of several validators under one error message using the MultiConditionValidator. Details
• Validators can intelligently disable themselves when the associated field is not in use on the page. Details and Demo
• Multiple formats for error messages including images with tooltips and alert boxes. No more encoding HTML into the ErrorMessage property. Details and Demo
• Standardize common error messages throughout the site so that page developers simply select the error message. Error messages can also be localized.
• Error messages can have tokens to show design time properties and runtime values. Details and Demo
• Validation is all about getting the user's attention. DES can change that field's colors, put up an alert, set focus to the field with the error, and blink the error message. Details and Demo
• Greatly enhanced ValidationSummary control. Details and Demo
• Built in Required Field Marker support. Details and Demo
• Support for more data entry controls, page submission, and grid controls including those from Telerik RadControls Suite and Infragistics NetAdvantage Suite. Details
• Powerful design mode tools to assist you when setting up your page. Details
• Bonus control! LocalizableLabel adapts the ASP.NET Label control to DES's string lookup system, which helps with localization.

Validator controls in Peter's Professional Validation:

• RequiredTextValidator – Tests if a field's textual value is "blank" or not. You can define what text represents "blank".
• RequiredListValidator – Tests if a ListBox, DropDownList, RadioButtonList, or CheckBoxList is "blank".
• DataTypeCheckValidator – Tests a field's textual value to confirm it represents a particular data type.
• CompareToValueValidator – Tests a field's textual value against another value that you supply. You determine the data type of the values and the operator to compare the two.
• CompareTwoFieldsValidator – Tests the values of two fields to each other. You select the operator that is used in the comparison and the data type.
• RangeValidator – Tests that a field's textual value is between a minimum and maximum value. You determine the data type of the values.
• RegexValidator – Tests a field's textual value against a regular expression.
• EmailAddressValidator – Reviews the pattern of text for an email address to make sure it conforms with standards.
• TextLengthValidator – Evaluates the number of characters in a TextBox against a minimum and/or maximum. It can evaluate the number of characters combined in two TextBoxes, if desired.
• CheckStateValidator – Evaluates the mark within a checkbox or radio button.
• SelectedIndexValidator – Evaluates the selected index of a ListBox, DropDownList, RadioButtonList, or CheckBoxList.
• MultiConditionValidator - Lets you combine the evaluation rules (conditions) of any validators in powerful boolean expressions.
• CustomValidator – Build your own validator's evaluation rules.
• IgnoreConditionValidator – This validator has no condition of its own. It is used to hold an error message that you manually show by setting its IsValid property false in some program code. While the CustomValidator forces you to move some of your validation logic into its own event handler, this validator lets you keep all of your logic in one common area.

There are 13 more validators in Peter's More Validators module, plus the CombinedErrorMessages control, and the Popup ErrorFormatter (similar to the ValidatorCalloutExtender).