Exception-handling Design Patterns

Abstract

Achieving dependable behavior from complex software systems requires that the software logic be able to recover from anomalous conditions or exceptional states. Such conditions and states may arise from embedded defects in the code or from erroneous data provided to the software for processing. One technique for enhancing the ability of software to perform such recovery is the insertion of exception detection and handling features into the logic. Such features may depend on specific exception-handling language facilities or on general-purpose language constructs. This chapter provides an overview of design considerations necessary to implement such recovery, and presents a series of commonly used design patterns that have proved to be successful in enhancing dependable behavior.