Introduction to Designing for Failure

Exception handling

Exception handling is one of the most brushed aside aspects of computer programming. Errors are complicated to handle, and often they are unlikely, so developers always forget to handle failures. Sometimes they even forget on purpose.

However, in a world where applications are distributed over the network, across miles of fiber optic cable and on different computers, failure is not an exception. It must be considered as the norm for your software. Failure scenarios must be firstclass citizens of the various testing scenarios being developed.