Configuration data can be manually developed or imported from any existing XER or XML files. The configuration files may be used to undertake validations either prior to or after any cleaning. 

This means you could check for changes in configuration data from subsequent files received from the same source or even to predict the possible impact on your production database if it were to be imported. 

Validation reports show matches, new items, and it also issues 'care' statements in the results log for mismatch clashes (e.g. a UDF with the same name but of different type)