Limitations

Exception detection

Procedural exception handlers enable detecting only part of the exceptional situations, often too late. Those exceptional situations not captured by the procedural exception handlers are often regarded as unexpected. The messages that the procedural handlers typically generate are useful for debugging, but are of low value for the operators. The reports generated provide low-quality feedback to the developers about ways to avoid the exceptions.

Common practices of exception handling enable disclosing part of the exceptional situations but not all of them:

• The handlers can capture exceptional situations only if they are predictable. Many exceptional situations are regarded as unpredictable. These include combination of states, operating under latent hazard, and operator’s unexpected activity.
• The handlers can capture the predictable exceptions only if the developers bothered to deal with them. Typically, developers focus on functionality, postponing the design and testing of exceptions to a late stage.

Exception management

The messages that the procedural handlers typically generate are useful for debugging, but are of low value for the operators. The reports generated provide low-quality feedback to the developers about ways to avoid the exceptions. Typical problem are:

• The feedback to developer is lost, because it is not stored in a knowledge base
• The feedback to operators is useless, because it does not link to the information the operators need in order to follow the troubleshooting and recovery procedures

Related topic

Updated on 03 Jun 2017.