A systematic approach for structuring exception handling in robust component-based software

Component-based development (CBD) is recognized today as the standard paradigm for structuring large software systems. However, the most popular component models and component-based development processes provide little guidance on how to systematically incorporate exception handling into component-based systems. The problem of how to employ language-level exception handling mechanisms to introduce redundancy in componentbased systems is recognized by CBD practitioners as very difficult and often not adequately solved. As a consequence, the implementation of the redundant exceptional behaviour causes a negative impact, instead of a positive one, on system and maintainability. In this paper, we propose an approach for the construction of dependable component-based systems that integrates two complementary strategies: (i) a global exception handling strategy for inter-component composition and (ii) a local exception handling strategy for dealing with errors in reusable components. A case study illustrates the application of our approach to a real software system.