[ecf-dev] Exception Handling of Remote Calls

[Peter Hermsdorf <peter.hermsdorf@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

i have a question regarding exception handling of remote calls which is 
not specific to ecf, but needs to be solved using ecf ;)

When doing remote calls which result in any kind of exception not 
related to the remoting itself (eg. exceptions of 3rd party libraries 
used on server side) they get serialized back to the client which (most 
of the time) results in ClassNotFound Exception because the library 
specific Exception class is not known at client side.

I would like to discuss ways to handle this kind of errors:

1) put all jars also on the client side

that would be the easiest but (from my point of view) also the worst 
solution. Polluting the client with libraries which he only needs for 
error display seems wrong to be. besides introducing additional 
dependencies and larger deployment artifacts

2) catch "application" exceptions on server side and wrap them into a 
"general" exception class which is also known on client side

catch Exceptions eg. in

org.eclipse.ecf.provider.remoteservice.generic.RegistrySharedObject.executeRequest

and before deserializing the response back to the client wrap the actual 
exception into a more general one (including copying call stack etc.)

that would be my preferred solution, but i'm not sure what is the entry 
point to start with the implementation. Any hints are greatly appreciated.
Best would be to have an implementation for this kind of error handling 
which is not provider dependent...

3) catching all errors in the implementation of the remote service and 
wrap them into this kind of general Exception

downside of this approach is a lot of boiler plate code in the remote 
service implementation and a pollution of the implementation itself with 
code which is only needed for error handling when called from remote....


Any other approaches or suggestions how to handle this kind of errors?

Thanks!

Best Regards,
Peter