A production specification should establish what is included, what remains conditional and what is outside the collection scope.
- Authorized access
- Collection must use agreed public, permissioned or otherwise authorized sources. Authenticated partner access cannot be assumed.
- Geographic coverage
- Countries, cities, delivery areas and merchant lists require individual review.
- Field availability
- Fields may vary by merchant, country, source type, language or collection context.
- Price comparability
- Product size, merchant, location, currency, modifiers and promotion conditions should remain distinguishable.
- Data freshness
- A timestamp records when a value was observed, not the exact moment the source changed.
- Missing records
- Unavailable fields, missing products and collection failures should not automatically be interpreted as the same condition.
- Private information
- Customer identities, order histories and unrelated personal information are outside the proposed market-intelligence scope.
- Maintenance
- Source changes, altered catalog structures and failed collection attempts require agreed exception and maintenance processes.
- Compliance
- Source permissions, access conditions and applicable legal requirements must be reviewed before production approval.
The purpose of validation is to make collected records interpretable and suitable for the agreed business use case. It does not establish perfect accuracy, universal coverage or uninterrupted availability.