Extended exceptions for contingencies and their implications for the engineering process

We observed a general problem of sequential programs, which often results in design and programming errors in industrial software engineering projects, and propose a solution approach. Telephone lines may be busy, banking accounts may be overdrawn and disks may be full. These things happen in the real world, causing the disruption and non-fulfillment of an expected service. Ignoring these problems leads to violations of the postconditions of the caller that depends on the service. The conditions are exactly known and cannot always be avoided, but measures could be taken afterwards. A good program should handle them as part of the specification. As such they are not specification violations and should not be regarded as errors. Unfortunately, they usually can or shall not be handled immediately within the direct caller, e.g., for information hiding reasons. The problem is similar to the problem of error code handling and handling them with exception mechanisms seems reasonable, but the...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: SIGSOFT
• Authors: Thorsten van Ellen, Wilhelm Hasselbring
• Keywords: Conventional Exception Mechanisms, Error Code Handling, SIGSOFT 2008, Software Engineering, Specification Violations