An efficient organizer of companion guide rules is created by a validation
application from the common set of rules among an industry's
implementation guide and the rulebooks, such as companion guides of one
or more entities, such as payers. The organizer of companion guide rules
creates an inventory of all rules and a profile for each companion guide
and stores each profile in metadata storage. Each profile contains
pointers to code in the inventory for all the rules employed by the
corresponding companion guide. After an EDI document reaches the
validation application, a runtime checker engine checks metadata storage
for a current rule set for the payer. A rule set is created the first
time a profile is accessed during the validation process and whenever the
profile is updated. The runtime checker engine attempts to validate the
EDI document by comparing it to the current rule set for a payer's
companion guide.