RE: [rules-dev] Drools API improvement sugestion

From: James C. Owen <jco(a)kbsc.com&gt; Subject: Re: [rules-dev] Drools API improvement sugestion To: "Greg Barton" <greg_barton(a)yahoo.com&gt;, "Rules Dev List" <rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org&gt;, zoly(a)daxtechnologies.com Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 11:15 AM Greetings: Not too often do I get personally involved in Java/J2EE disputes among

those who are virtually experts at this game. However, exceptions is one of my pet peeves. NOT catching an exception shows a bit of disregard for the integrity of the product itself and, IMHO, everything should be in a try / catch block such that the exception is

NOT caught only in trivial circumstances. (And if it's so trivial that it doesn't need a try/catch block, is it necessary at all?) As an old C programmer (yes, there are still a few of us around) if we thought that we were really, really good programmers we would run "lint" on our program before sending it to QA. And QA always ran "lint" just for the fun of showing up our poor programming. It was usually an humbling experience. Catching all of the exceptions during

testing should be required. Catching all of the exceptions during run

time is debatable. I would think that NOT catching exceptions is what

makes for run time problems that could have been caught during compile/ design time. The final question is WHAT to do with a caught exception? This is where experience shows up and with some you can just toss an error statement in a log somewhere with a warning. Others require an error routine and stopping the program. Then that becomes a matter of judgement. Catch and release? Nahhh... I only fish to eat, not for sport. :-) Just two cents. SDG James Owen Senior Consultant / Architect 817.656.4553 office 214.684.5272 cell Founder KnowledgeBased Systems Corporation http://www.kbsc.com Founder

October Rules Fest http://www.OctoberRulesFest.org Blogs: http://JavaRules.blogspot.com [Java-Oriented Rulebased Systems] http://ORF2009.blogspot.com [October Rules Fest] http://exscg.blogspot.com/ [Expert Systems Consulting Group] "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night

the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." Hamlet, Act 1, Scene III http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/hamlet/hamlet.1.3.html On Dec 12, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Greg Barton wrote: > I vote for runtime exception. That gives you the option of catching > it or not. Just from experience I can't tell you how nice it was > when HibernateException went from a checked to an unchecked exception. > > That being said, the API methods that can throw it should still > declare it in the throws clause, even if it's a runtime exception. > That helps IDEs like Eclipse wrap method calls in the right try/ > catch blocks when generating code. (See the "Source->Surround With- > >try/catch block" menu option) > > --- On Fri, 12/12/08, Zoltan Farkas <zoly(a)daxtechnologies.com&gt; wrote: > >> From: Zoltan Farkas <zoly(a)daxtechnologies.com&gt; >> Subject: RE: [rules-dev] Drools API improvement sugestion >> To: "Rules Dev List" <rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org&gt; >> Date: Friday, December 12, 2008, 10:10 AM >>> From my point of view as a developer who writes code >> against the api, >> I have to handle to case of a Resource not being there, or >> being >> invalid/corupt... theese are casses that I need to recover >> from in my >> code... >> and I have no way of knowing what do I need to catch and >> where, without >> first writing the code, run tests against it, and examine >> stack traces. >> I find this quite inefficient... >> >> If you google for ResourceNotFoundException, you will find >> out that >> there is quite a few APIs out there that implement it. >> There is other >> apis that have InvalidResourceException... or >> javx.resource.ResourceException >> >> My preference would be toward catched Exceptions in this >> case. >> >> --zoly >> >> >> ________________________________ >> >> From: rules-dev-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org >> [mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org] On Behalf Of >> Mark Proctor >> Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 8:04 PM >> To: Rules Dev List >> Subject: Re: [rules-dev] Drools API improvement sugestion >> >> >> Zoltan Farkas wrote: >> >> Based on current implementation, the following methods I >> think >> should throw a exception, something like: >> ResourceNotFoundException >> >> do you want this as runtime or catched exception? At the >> moment we are >> trying to avoid catched exceptions. >> >> Mark >> >> >> >> org.drools.compiler.PackageBuilder.addKnowledgeResource() >> org.drools.builder.impl.KnowledgeBuilderImpl.add() >> >> another option might be to verify the validity of a >> Resource >> object at creation time and make ResourceFactory factory >> methods throw >> ResourceNotFoundException. >> >> I believe the case of a "not found resource" the >> user of the api >> should be "ecouraged" to handle. >> >> Another case that might be needed to be handled could be >> InvalidResource? >> >> Let me know what you guys think >> >> Regards >> >> --zoly >> >> ________________________________ >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> rules-dev mailing list >> rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org >> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-dev >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> rules-dev mailing list >> rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org >> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-dev > > > > _______________________________________________ > rules-dev mailing list > rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org > https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-dev