Women in Technology

Article:		Best Practices for Exception Handling
Subject:		Don't wrap exceptions!
Date:		2003-11-27 05:39:31
From:		anonymous2
Response to: Don't wrap exceptions!
"This decision should NEVER be made by any library code because it shifts too much knowledge of a process into the client code; this in term severely limits reusability." But it should *also* not be done by your business code - business code shouldn't know about SQL at all! So, what you need is a persistence layer, specific to your application. If that layer decides that the Exception can't be handled reasonably, it's a good thing to wrap the original SqlException into a more generic PersistenceException or something.

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• Don't wrap exceptions!
  2003-12-01 08:14:43  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Sorry, but you're missing the point. Whether the business code knows about SQL or not is simply of no concern. Whether it is a SQLException or your "PersistenceException": the business code should not handle any exceptions it knows nothing about. And wrapping it only removed a single layer: if the business code itself is layered also do you wrap all exceptions of the lower layers???
  
  Wrapping SQLException in something else does not solve anything: you still have to pass the exception around, and have some layer handle it.
  
  What I'm saying is that IF you have a SQL error that you do not fix in the originating layer you may as well pass it upwards and have topmost layer decide what to do with it: report some critical failure and log the ACTUAL problem instead of logging the wrapper.