Operational failures are often associated with design and implementation errors in handling rare, exceptional situations. A common practice for dealing with rare situations is programmatically, by exception handlers.
Exception handling is the process of responding to the occurrence, during computation, of exceptions – anomalous or exceptional conditions requiring special processing – often changing the normal flow of program execution. It is provided by specialized programming language constructs or computer hardware mechanisms ( Wiki)
Traditional exception handlers are procedural. They 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.
A framework for rule-based exception handling is proposed here, which enables early detection of all exceptional situations, preventing the surprise. The method is implements the principles of self-control, based on explicit, formal representation of the operational rules, in form of protocols. Unexpected situations are defined here by deviations from the set of protocols comprising the designer’s expectations.
The rule-based handler includes modules for supporting common operational activities of troubleshooting, alarming and reporting about the need for design changes.
Updated on 04 Jun 2017.