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Specifying and Designing Exception Handling with FMEA

Authors:
Tsuneo Nakanishi
Kenji Hisazumi
Akira Fukuda

Keywords: HAZOP; exception handling; commonality and variability analysis

Abstract:
This paper proposes a methodology to specify and design exception classes and exception handling codes used in the try-catch-finally exception handling control structure, which is available in C++, Java and similar programming languages. Poorly described specifications of exceptional operations cause ad-hoc, individual dependent use of the try-catch-finally exception control structures and fail in poorly designed exception classes and duplicated codes in the exception handling codes. Therefore, the methodology employs HAZOP (hazard and operability analysis) and FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) to specify the exceptional operations in a consistent manner. HAZOP is used to find failure modes of the specified normal operations and then FMEA is applied to the failure modes to specify their countermeasures (namely, exception handling). Commonality and variability analysis of the specified countermeasures is performed. The result of this analysis is used to design exception classes and exception handling codes, which leads disciplined use of the exception handling control structure and elimination of duplicated codes in exception handling.

Pages: 188 to 196

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2012

Publication date: November 18, 2012

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4235

ISBN: 978-1-61208-230-1

Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Dates: from November 18, 2012 to November 23, 2012