This may be a bit winded because I am new to wpf. I have created a partial class for an entity in my L2S class that is primarily used for validation. It implements the onchanging and onvalidate methods. I am trying to use the MVVM pattern, and in a window/view I have set the datacontext in the xaml: <Window.DataContext> <vm:StartViewModel /> </Window.DataContext> when a user leaves a required field in the view blank, the onchanging event of the partial class is fired when I close the form, not when I save the data. So, if a user leaves the textbox blank, the old value is retained and the onchaging method is fired, but I have no idea how to alert the user of the resulting error. here is my onchanging code in the partial class: partial void Ondocument_titleChanging(string value) { if (value.Length == 0) throw new Exception("Document title is required."); if (value.Length > 256) throw new Exception("Document title cannot be longer than 256 characters."); } throwing an exception doesn't notify the user of the error. it just allows the form to close and rejects the changes to the textbox. hope this makes sense... edit: this example was taken from Scott Guthries article here: http://aspalliance.com/1427_LINQ_to_SQL_Part_5__Binding_UI_using_the_ASPLinqDataSource_Control.5