Validation of Exception Handling in the Development of Dependable Component-Based Software Systems

The use of exception handling mechanisms to develop robust software in a non-systematic manner can be a source of many design faults. This paper presents an approach that allows to systematize the validation of the system's exceptional behavior at both the software architecture and detailed design levels. At the software architecture, our solution is based on the specification and verification of architectural scenarios. At the detailed design level, the proposed solution consists on a static analysis tool that collects information regarding exceptional flows in a given behavioral model, to assist the task of validating the exceptional flow. This analysis anticipates the detection and therefore the correction of failures during the specification phase. The feasibility of our approach was evaluated by a case study of a mining control system.