Exception Handling in Object Oriented Systems Alexander Romanovsky 1 , Christophe Dony 2 , Jørgen Lindskov Knudsen 3 , and Anand Tripathi 4 1 Department of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK alexander.romanovsky@ncl.ac.uk 2 Université Montpellier-II and LIRMM Laboratory, 161 rue Ada, 34392 Montpellier Cedex 5, France dony@lirmm.fr 3 Department of Computer Science, University of Aarhus, Åbogade 34, DK-8200 Århus N, Denmark jlk@daimi.au.dk 4 Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA tripathi@cs.umn.edu Abstract. Exception handling continues to be a challenging problem in object oriented system design. One reason for this is that today’s software systems are getting increasingly more complex. Moreover, exception handling is needed in a wide range of application systems, sometimes requiring domain-specific models for handling exceptions. Also, concurrency, distribution, and code mo- bility add new dimensions to the existing challenges in this area. The integra- tion of exception handling mechanisms in a design needs to be based on well- founded principles and formal models to deal with the complexities of such systems and to ensure robust and reliable operation. It needs to be pursued at the very start of a design with a clear understanding of the ensuing implica- tions at all stages, ranging from design specification, implementation, opera- tion, maintenance, and evolution. This workshop was structured around the presentation and discussion of the various research issues in this regard to de- velop a common understanding of the current and future directions of research in this area. 1 Summary of Objectives and Results Modern object oriented systems are getting more complex and they have to cope with an increasing number of exception conditions representing abnormal situations or fail- ures. The most general way of dealing with these problems is by incorporating excep- tion handling techniques in the design. Over the past decade, several models and mechanisms for handling exceptions have been proposed and developed for object ori- ented (OO) languages and systems, but there are still many open problems in applying them in practice due to the complexity of exception code design and analysis, due to lack of methodologies supporting proper use of exception handling, and by not ad- dressing exception handling at proper phases of OO system development. Traditionally, over the past 30 years, the research in exception handling has centered around the design and implementation of programming languages. More recently, there has been an increase in research activities dealing with exception handling mod- els and mechanisms in a wide range of application systems such as databases and transaction processing systems, workflow systems, distributed object management