I am in the midst of building a simple application that extracts data from / saves data to an SQL Server database.

I have created a class (in this case classCompany) for loading and saving of data.

My question is, what is the best method for performing validation? For example, the class has a property called CompanyName of type string. CompanyName is not allowed to be null.

What I have thought might be a good approach is to incorporate the data validation into the Set portion of the Property. Thus, my Property looks like:

    Public Property CompanyName() As String
        Get
            Return stringCompanyName
        End Get
        Set(ByVal value As String)
            If String.IsNullOrEmpty(value) Then
                'error, this is not allowed
                MsgBox("Error Message", MsgBoxStyle.Exclamation, "Value Out of Range")
            Else
                stringCompanyName = value
            End If
        End Set
    End Property

I thought to place it here, since then the validation need only occur once in my code. Is this an acceptable way of validating data, or is there a better / neater method?

Thanks in advance.

It might be better to raise an error: My feeling is that it is best to stop a disallowed action at the moment it it attempted—as you have done here.