I've been trying to eliminate, or at least vastly reduce the need for middleware in a specific class of applications, but this problem probably cuts that task short.
We have incoming documents that need to be validated against data stored in other docs (rate tables, technical abbreviations, inspection codes). There is a high procedural cost to allowing documents in and validating them after saving (queue processing), but validation functions don't allow bringing in external data (correct me if I'm wrong, please.) Without writing middleware or sideware (an external handler), I don't see a way to do this. What are the arguments against including a native 'lookup' function available to validation functions only. This seems to be a side-effect-free usage case to me. Reads are cheap, correct? If my memory hasn't completely failed, this was a significant problem in Lotus Notes until such a function was added, somewhere around version 3.3 or 4.0. David Richardson
