Except for exception handling …

ABSTRACT

Exception handling in Ada has a number of well-known problems. It allows for the propagation of unhandled and anonymous exceptions, it is error-prone and it is inappropriate for some language features such as tasking and tagged types. Ada programs with exceptions can be difficult to understand, develop, modify and analyse, and the exception handling features can be misused in a number of ways.In this paper we introduce the requirements for good exception handling features. We classify the problems with Ada exception handling into two subsets: serious conceptual problems that require an improvement of the language features, and problems attributable to the misuse of the existing features. Problems in the second category can be solved by improving programmers' understanding of the features and ways of using them.

REFERENCES

• 1: C. Ausnit-Hood. Ada 95 Quality and Style: Guidelines for Professional Programmers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1344, Springer-Verlag. 1997.
• 2: Peter T. Brennan, Observations on program-wide Ada exception propagation, Proceedings of the conference on TRI-Ada '93, p.189-195, September 18-23, 1993, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/170657.170734]
• 3: J. Barnes. High Integrity Ada. The SPARK Approach. Addison-Wesley, 1997.
• 4: W. G. Bail. Exception-handling Design Patterns. In Advances in Computers, v. 49. Academic Press, 191-238, 1999.
• 5: M. Bidoit, M.-C. Gaudel, G. Guino. Towards a Systematic and Safe Programming of Exception Handling in Ada. Proc. 3rd Joint Ada Europe/Ada-TEC Conference, The Ada Companion Series, Cambridge University Press, 141-152, 1984.
• 6: Gary N. Bundy , Diane E. Mularz, Error-Prone Exception Handling in Large Ada Systems, Proceedings of the 12th Ada-Europe International Conference, p.153-170, June 14-18, 1993
• 7: F. Cristian. Exception Handling and Tolerance of Software Faults. In Lyu, M. R. (Ed.): Software Fault Tolerance. Wiley, 81-108, 1994.
• 8: R. Chapman, A. Burns, A. J. Wellings. Worst-Case Timing Analysis of Exception Handing in Ada. Proc. Ada UK Conference, London, UK, 1993.
• 9: Qian Cui , John Gannon, Data-Oriented Exception Handling, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.18 n.5, p.393-401, May 1992 [doi>10.1109/32.135772]
• 10: Roy H. Campbell , Brian Randell, Error recovery in asynchronous systems, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.12 n.8, p.811-826, Aug. 1986
• 11: Bo Frisberg, Ada in the JAS 39 Gripen Flight Control System, Proceedings of the 1998 Ada-Europe International Conference on Reliable Software Technologies, p.288-296, June 08-12, 1998
• 12: Michel Gauthier, Exception Handling in Ada-94: Initial Users' Requests and Final Features, ACM SIGAda Ada Letters, v.XV n.1, p.70-83, Jan./Feb. 1995 [doi>10.1145/199682.569227]
• 13: A. Garcia, D. Beder, C. Rubira. An Exception Handling Software Architecture for Developing Fault-Tolerant Software, Proc. 5th International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering, 311-320, 2000.
• 14: C. Howell , D. Mularz, Exception handling in large Ada systems, Proceedings of the eighth annual Washington Ada symposium & summer SIGAda meeting on Ada: software: foundation for competitveness, p.90-101, June 17-21, 1991, McLean, Virginia, United States [doi>10.1145/134494.134503]
• 15: Jean D. Ichbiah , Bernd Krieg-Brueckner , Brian A. Wichmann , John G. P. Barnes , Olivier Roubine , Jean-Claude Heliard, Rationale for the design of the Ada programming language, ACM SIGPLAN Notices, v.14 n.6b, p.1-261, June 1979 [doi>10.1145/956653.956654]
• 16: C. A. Koeritz , J. C. Knight, Anomalies Encountered in Ada Exception Handling, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, 1993
• 17: Jörg Kienzle , Ricardo Jiménez-Peris , Alexander B. Romanovsky , Marta Patiño-Martínez, Transaction Support for Ada, Proceedings of the 6th Ade-Europe International Conference Leuven on Reliable Software Technologies, p.290-304, May 14-18, 2001
• 18: John D. Litke, A systematic approach for implementing fault tolerant software designs in Ada, Proceedings of the conference on TRI-ADA '90, p.403-408, December 03-06, 1990, Baltimore, Maryland, United States [doi>10.1145/255471.255565]
• 19: D. C. Luckham, F. W. von Hanke. An Overview of Anna, a Specification Language for Ada. IEEE Software, 2, 2, 9-22, 1985.
• 20: Alexander Romanovsky, An Exception Handling Framework for N-Version Programming in Object-Oriented Systems, Proceedings of the Third IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing, p.226, March 15-17, 2000
• 21: Alexander Romanovsky , Jörg Kienzle, Action-oriented exception handling in cooperative and competitive concurrent object-oriented systems, Advances in exception handling techniques, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 2001
• 22: Carl F. Schaefer , Gary N. Bundy, Static analysis of exception handling in Ada, Software—Practice & Experience, v.23 n.10, p.1157-1174, Oct. 1993 [doi>10.1002/spe.4380231007]
• 23: B. A. Wichmann, Guidance for the use of the Ada programming language in high integrity systems, ACM SIGAda Ada Letters, v.XVIII n.4, p.47-94, July/Aug. 1998 [doi>10.1145/290214.290222]
• 24: Andy Wellings , Alan Burns, Implementing Atomic Actions in Ada 95, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.23 n.2, p.107-123, February 1997 [doi>10.1109/32.585500]
• 25: Liz Whiting , Mike Hill, Safety analysis of Hawk In Flight monitor, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, v.24 n.5, p.32-38, Sept. 1999
• 26: Jie Xu , Alexander Romanovsky , Brian Randell, Coordinated Exception Handling in Distributed Object Systems: From Model to System Implementation, Proceedings of the The 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, p.12, May 26-29, 1998