9. A document processing system configured for error handling during document processing comprising: a computer with at least one processor and memory; a document processing computer program executing on the computer; a parser and document validator coupled to the document processing computer program, the parser parsing data in a received well-defined document, the document comprising a multiplicity of different fields, the validator validating the parsed data according to a plan for the well-defined document; and, an error handling module coupled to the document processing computer program, the module comprising program code enabled to detect an error during parsing and validation by the parser and validator of a received well-defined document, and on condition that an error is detected, to further determine if enough of the well-defined document conforms to the defined plan in so far as the programmatic input needs of the document processing computer program require successful parsing and validation of only a subset of the fields, and on condition that enough of the well-defined document conforms to the defined plan in that ones of the fields required as programmatic input for the document processing computer program are determined to be successfully parsed and validated in the document and ones of the fields of the document determined not to be successfully parsed and validated also are determined not to be required as programmatic input for the document processing computer program, to process by the document processing computer program the well-defined document notwithstanding the detected error, but otherwise to terminate use of the well-defined document in the document processing computer program.
12. The system of claim 9 , wherein the programmatic input needs of the computer program comprises data in a selected set of fields but not all of the fields of the well-defined document.