Modern software systems are becoming more complex in many ways and are having to cope with a growing number of abnormal situations which, in turn, are increasingly complex to handle. Exception handling is an essential part of software and system architectures and a crucial element in the tool-set that enables the building of resilient, robust and safe software systems. Two ECOOP workshops on exception handling were held in 2003 and 2005. This book is primarily an outcome of these two events - several workshop participants as well as a number of other leading researchers in the field were invited to contribute a chapter each.

This book is composed of five parts; the first four deal with topics related to exception handling in the context of programming languages, concurrency and operating systems, pervasive computing systems, and requirements and specifications. The last part focuses on case studies, experimentation and qualitative comparisons. The 16 coherently written chapters by leading researchers competently address a wide range of issues in exception handling.

Modern software systems are becoming more complex in many ways and have to cope with a growing number of abnormal situations which, in turn, are increasingly complex to handle. The most general way of dealing with these problems is by incorporating exception handling techniques in software design. In the past, various exception handling models and techniques have been proposed and many of them are part of practical languages and software composition technologies.
This book is composed of five parts, which deal with topics related to exception handling in the context of programming language models, design methodologies, concurrent and distributed systems, applications and experiences, and large-scale systems such as database and workflow process mangagement systems. The 17 coherently written chapters by leading researchers competently address a wide range of issues in exception handling.