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Programming IT Technology

Free Web-Based Exception Reporting 145

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the interesting-concept-awaiting-execution dept.
Tsar writes "Promethean Personal Software (makers of Sherpa, a code generating tool for db apps) have quietly released ExceptionCollection, a free (as in beer) online service for developers using any SOAP-enabled environment. You sign up on the site, download their component, add three or four lines of code to your app, and any exceptions thrown by your users get logged at ExceptionCollection.com for your later perusal (the last 100 anyway). There are several options, like whether reporting requires user approval. Is this as cool as it looks, or a solution in search of a problem?"
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Free Web-Based Exception Reporting More

Free Web-Based Exception Reporting

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  • exceptions? don't use 'em (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:11AM (#13555919)
    I don't like exceptions because you have to catch them. Exception based coding is for amateurs.

    Real professionals like me, who graduated at the top of his class from Rockhurst College in Kansas City, a top college - pass return codes around rather than do all that exception baloney.

    And it is some big time BALONEY.

    • Re:exceptions? don't use 'em (Score:5, Funny)

      by mysticwhiskey ( 569750 ) <`mystic_whiskey' `at' `hotmail.com'> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:20AM (#13555985)
      And the exception's travelling far out-field, up, up , up! Yes, there's the AC, he's under it, almost a certain catch! NO! He doesn't catch it! What's this? He writing on post-it note! He hands it to the umpire... let's switch to the umpire-cam... and the result is... "Code -99 : Exception not caught, glove object not instantiated".
    • See, now, I read this and I go 'hey, I use return codes for everything I do' ... so I have to ask, what are the exceptions you speak of?

      I'm not a programmer, I'm just a lowly admin type, so don't abuse me. I'm not up on my programming techniques. /dumb.

      • Re:exceptions? don't use 'em (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jeremy Singer ( 717636 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:44AM (#13556129)
        What if your code throws some exception you weren't expecting, even though you use return codes?
        Examples:
        1. Your code invokes a method on an object you didn't code, and it throws an exception. Wouldn't it be nice to know where the exception happened?
        2. You made an unanticipated mistake! Your code throws a null pointer exception. Of course, if you are perfect, this never happens.

        • Re:exceptions? don't use 'em (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Wouldn't you be able to catch either of those in debug?

          A more logical response to an exception than graceful handling is actual handling. If you run out of memory, what will you do? If you are receiving null pointers, how can you stop the sender from doing that? If your program is calling an unimplemented function, why isn't your linker catching it?

          Exceptions are a way of making easily found bugs difficult to find. They move the instruction pointer far away from the actual error, and unroll the stackfra

          • Does your compiler/linker also check databases and their structure? Does it perhaps check external db's far away from your control?

            Do you like having dangling connections all over the place? No. I didn't think so.

            String sql = null;
            MyDBConnector db = null;

            try {

            sql = "insert into customers values(1, 'Acme Inc');";
            db = new MyDBConnector();
            db.statement.executeUpdate(sql);

            } catch(SQLException ex) {
            Log.write("SQL error: \"" + ex.getMessage() +"\" while running \"" + sql + "\"");
            } catch(Exception ex)

    • Return codes? bah. What do you think void was invented for?

    • Re:exceptions? don't use 'em (Score:4, Funny)

      by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred@f r e d s h o m e . o rg> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:56AM (#13556209) Homepage
      Well, as long as people from Kansas use more SOAP, I'm all for it.

      (ducks and runs)
    • Rockhurt, Top College? Pfft. That's why it hides under the shadow of UMKC! ( I saw some replies that were confused, Kansas City is in Misosuri -- not Kansas )

  • Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elronxenu ( 117773 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:12AM (#13555926) Homepage
    Let me see if I have this straight. You run a SOAP server, and you use this vendor's library so that your users (who are presumably remote to you, but running your code) will report their exceptions to the vendor's database, which you can query later.

    Why don't you just add one more function to your SOAP server and have your exception handler connect to that?

    • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

      by /ASCII ( 86998 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:29AM (#13556050) Homepage
      Adding this functionality to your code means creating the database, designing an interface to recieve exceptions, an administrative interface to view reported exceptions, setting up a clientside exception handler and a piece of code for marshalling the expception to the server.

      Either that or just register with the site, download a small package and add four lines of code to your program.

      So this saves you a few hous work, but costs you confidentiality, full control over the exception database and injects non-free code into your software.

      Overall, a pretty louse tradeof.

      • Re:Hmm (Score:5, Insightful)

        by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @09:10AM (#13556314) Journal

        Adding this functionality to your code means creating the database, designing an interface to recieve exceptions, an administrative interface to view reported exceptions, setting up a clientside exception handler and a piece of code for marshalling the expception to the server.

        Or you could just write a top-level exception handler that e-mails the exception traces to you.

        That's one option, but there are lots of other simple approaches that all start with "Catch the exception, put its text into a file and then...". Why complicate this with a database and a custom viewing interface?

        • Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

          by should_be_linear ( 779431 )
          Or you could just write a top-level exception handler that e-mails the exception traces to you.
          This is quite bad idea because you must have UI for setting up smtp, port (proxy?) username, password.... In the end, all most users would see when exception occures is "Unable to connect to SMTP sever x".

          • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

            by Rycross ( 836649 )
            Not if its a web application. We use this system at my work place, with the addition of generating an RSS feed from the emails. Basically, when we put the app on production, we just have to change the smtp server property in our web.config to point to the correct smtp server.

            If you're running an actual local application, then you'll run into problems. But if you have clients that work in one area (say, a custom in-house application), then the exception reporting works beautifully. Its really quite a
          • This is quite bad idea because you must have UI for setting up smtp, port (proxy?) username, password.... In the end, all most users would see when exception occures is "Unable to connect to SMTP sever x".

            Since you want it to report back to *you*, your SMTP server information would be in there, and no username/password would be required. Granted, this may fail in firewalled situations but given a large enough user base you should get enough reports from people who aren't firewalled that it won't matter sta
        • Or you could just write a top-level exception handler that e-mails the exception traces to you. That's one option, but there are lots of other simple approaches that all start with "Catch the exception, put its text into a file and then...". Why complicate this with a database and a custom viewing interface?

          Volume and reporting. If your app is used enough, the volume is too great for email. It's nice to have some reporting features so that you can see troubled components or even troubled users.

          • Volume and reporting. If your app is used enough, the volume is too great for email.

            This service only tracks the last 100 exceptions anyway.

      • Overall, a pretty louse tradeof.

        So the code is full of lice then? Must be pretty buggy

      • ...or you could just download log4net, add a few lines of code to your app, and use notepad as your wizbang administrative interface.

        Seriously, could they overkill exception logging to any greater degree? You want me to make a remote call to a 3rd party web service just so I can read my own exceptions??
      • means creating the database, designing an interface to recieve exceptions, an administrative interface to view reported exceptions In windows there is the event log and writing code to write to the event log is trivial.
    • Theoretically the client can use the exception service to report errors that could not be caught on the server (server crash, network down).

      Although I doubt that this will fly on an enterprise level project.

    • How do you know I have a soap server?
      And what's a soap server anyway?

    • Because ... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PetoskeyGuy ( 648788 )
      You'll end up paying them for use of the patent anyway.
      Copyright 2005, Promethean Personal Software

      Patents pending.

    • Re:Hmm (Score:3, Informative)

      by Nik13 ( 837926 )
      If someone is using .Net then there is something FAR better already (it's not new either): the EMAB [Exception Management Application Block], which is part of the Microsoft Enterprise Library. You get the full source code, and it has been tested extensively. They're very well documented (lots of articles on the web too) and come with samples and everything you need to get started. It's easier to setup and use (imho). Publishing exceptions take only 1 line of code (in your catch blocks), and it's far more fl

    • Re:Hmm (Score:2)

      by hugg ( 22953 )

      Why don't you just add one more function to your SOAP server and have your exception handler connect to that?

      You see, these SOAP servers go to eleven.

  • There is a definite market for something like this. Knowing what exceptions your application is generating at runtime "in the wild" is very valuable to help debug and speed bug fixes.

    The only problem is that it would be much more convenient if the exception were sent directly to the application makers instead of to some third party. Microsoft's error reporting system is somewhat like this, but I don't know anyone who actually sends in bug reports when an application crashes in XP. Likewise, Firefox used
    • > The only problem is that it would be much more
      > convenient if the exception were sent directly to
      > the application makers instead of to some third
      > party.

      Exactly what I've done for one of my own software. This is REALLY wonderful. Each time the app crashes I (by default) receive an email with a copy to the local admin as configured by him.

      Of course for privacy reasons, this is NOT activated by default. The admin MUST change the configuration file for the thing to be activated, and of course he

    • Re:It's a solution, but not a complete one (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:23AM (#13556012) Homepage
      "but I don't know anyone who actually sends in bug reports when an application crashes in XP"

      There are several reasons for this... you almost never get any sort of reply, most users are practically incapable of writing a useful bug report (what were you doing, what did you click, etc.) and from what I see the majority of the information in an XP error report such as this is just some processor states and a few technical details.

      I fail to see how anyone but a machine code professional would decode the XP reports, or how they would know what state the machine was in or why it crashed. The open-source project, OpenTTD, had this same feature for a while until it was scrapped when they realised that no-one could interpret the results or, if they could, it was far too complex, far too time-consuming and far too vague to the programmers.

      I'm not saying you COULDN'T make the debug reports much better but then you're basically building every executable in a debug state, i.e. massively bloated and not as good performing, even if you go the highly-manual route and go through the code putting in printf's for each procedure entrance.

      Bug reports are invaluable to a programmer but they need to be the right type. Spending 7 hours to trace the machine code route through a hex dump to find that someone was running it on a machine with a corrupt DLL is a massive waste of resources.

      Getting experienced beta- and alpha- testers to submit a detailed, reproducible, bug where you can actually ask them to try patches out for you is amillion times more useful

      • Re:It's a solution, but not a complete one (Score:5, Informative)

        by arkanes ( 521690 ) <arkanes@NoSPam.gmail.com> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @09:50AM (#13556652) Homepage
        The minidumps generated by XP are actually extremely powerful, assuming you've got good project management. You can load up the minidump in a debugger and it will restore the application state at the time of the crash. It can load the debugging info and symbol maps from local files, so you can still ship release binaries.

        • Re:It's a solution, but not a complete one (Score:5, Informative)

          by Darkling-MHCN ( 222524 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @11:04AM (#13557329)
          I once had an issue with my compaq blue screening returning out of sleep mode, I'd installed every update on compaq's website and scoured the net for a solution.

          One day out of sheer desparation I decided to send the report off to Microsoft and to my surprise it came back with a link to a support website giving very obscure step by step instructions which magically resolved my problem.

          I don't often get exceptions in windows where I'm at a loss for an explanation as to the cause, but in future when I do I'll definitely be posting them to Microsoft.
        • The minidumps generated by XP are actually extremely powerful, assuming you've got good project management. You can load up the minidump in a debugger and it will restore the application state at the time of the crash. It can load the debugging info and symbol maps from local files, so you can still ship release binaries.
          bash$ gdb a.out a.out.core
          Doing it since 99 :)

      • I'm not saying you COULDN'T make the debug reports much better but then you're basically building every executable in a debug state, i.e. massively bloated and not as good performing, even if you go the highly-manual route and go through the code putting in printf's for each procedure entrance.

        Even a simple stack trace can be very useful, even from non-debug binaries. You don't need the symbol information in the distributed binary. The address->symbol map you can keep at home and merge it after the trac

      • I once called IBM to let them know about a bug in OS/2. The bug was from a third party app that used the serial drivers and caused an OS/2 equivalent of a BSOD. I'd figured out why this happened, found a work around, and thought I'd let IBM know about both the bug and the solution. The report was an altruistic attempt to help IBM make their software better for everyone. My mistake. The first words out of the IBM rep were "Your 90 days of free support start now."
      • When Netscape was using Talkback I found it quite useful. It provided stacks that often pinpointed errors. It was also good for identifying problems quickly. Reports were provided that identified top crashers. And there's little substitute for crashes that are hard to impossible to reproduce due to hardward and software variations.

        For talkback or Win32 minidump you don't need to build debug either. You just build with symbols in a release mode and then strip off the symbols before you ship. Save those sy
      • A friend of mine got a serious response after he sent the automated crash report to Microsoft. He got some message that he should update some driver. That is pretty freaky. The reaction was instantaneous so it is a computer-program for sure :D
        • I got the same thing with my laptop Intel graphics chip. It even pointed me to the location of an updated driver on the Intel website.

          It's a nice idea actually - the minidump contains a stackframe, version info and the exception code, and it's probably pretty easy to write a script to spot known errors if you have that.

          The really slick thing is that the machine didn't crash - it switched back to the VGA driver in 640x480x16 colour and displayed a dialog box telling me to save. Then I shut down and it contac

  • [sarcasm]what a great idea![/sarcasm] (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aranganath ( 638813 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:16AM (#13555950)
    I can't think of any reason NOT to send detailed information about where my application is broken and possibly exploitable to one centralized location that I maintain no control over.

    I wonder what they do with their exceptions.

  • We at Promethean Personal Software promise to never share your email address with another organization, but we reserve the right to send you one piece of email ("spam") about our products per week. You can opt out of the service at any time.

    Sounds like I have to "pay" via annoying emails about products... Also, I'm not sure what the advantage is here over a normal bug tracking system. Automatic recording of the Exception message? Blah...

  • ...sounds like a major security faux pas.

  • Only 100 exceptions? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:21AM (#13555993)
    It only allows the developer to see the last 100 exceptions? That might be fine and dandy for a site that only receives 100 hits per day. But when you're running an enterprise-grade site that gets 5 or 6 million hits on a slow day, 100 exceptions will basically be nothing. You could probably sit there and refresh the list of exceptions, getting a completely new list each time.

    • You're generating 5 to 6 million exceptions per day on an enterprise grade site? WOW, just... WOW

      • Re:Only 100 exceptions? (Score:3, Informative)

        by CyricZ ( 887944 )
        No, ma'am. Had you read my post you'd see that I had said 5 or 6 million hits. Now consider that even just 1% of those 5 million hits throw an exception. That's 50 000 exceptions.

        More realistically, even if just 0.1% of those 5 million hits throw an exception, you're looking at 5000 exceptions. That's 50 times the number of exceptions this site will list. A whole lot of data is being lost.

        • Could you even deal with 5000 exceptions a day? Personally I think 100 exceptions a day would keep most people busy and would probably capture most of the issues with an application (many would be dupes anyway)

          Bob
          • Of course it's better to know about them, even if they cannot all be dealt with immediately or there are duplicates.

            If there are a certain exception is thrown perhaps 4500 times out of the 5000 exceptions, then perhaps that's the problem to deal with first.

            Likewise, it may provide useful to know if a recent change is causing problems that weren't caught by the existing testing procedure. Knowing of such problems would allow the testing procedure to be fixed, as well as the code.

        • If your getting anywhere that many exceptions a day it is high time that you invest some money in testing. Whether this testing be having the developers take some training in what testing actually is or having actual testers do the job, either option will save you time and money in the future.
        • I read your post right. I was being an ass.

          But, chances are that if you're getting ANY exception on an enterprise web app, its going to be the same one over and over anyways.
        • "No, ma'am. Had you read my post you'd see that I had said 5 or 6 million hits. Now consider that even just 1% of those 5 million hits throw an exception. That's 50 000 exceptions." If you are even throwing 5k execptions in a day on an ENTERPRISE site...you have more problems to deal with...like learning how to CODE a stable site. If you had a common enough exception for 5000...your going to get allot more than that. Even with 5000 exceptions bad bad things are happening. Fire and brimstone coming down
        • Further if an enterprise site is using a freebee exception tracking service...well..I really don't have to say anything do I.
        • Then build your own server. Jeez. This is obviously for people who:

          a) Are not in a position to have their own database getting this information.
          or
          b) Believe that they can get useful information out of the last 100 exceptions.
        • So the service can have 99% of their resources boggged down by .1% of their clients who think they need 50,000 exceptions to find out whats going wrong?

    • Re:Only 100 exceptions? (Score:5, Funny)

      by tgd ( 2822 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @10:02AM (#13556768)
      Do not put a link to this post on your resume.

      Trust me.

  • Great for spyware (Score:3, Interesting)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:21AM (#13555996)
    1. Collect data from unsuspecting users of your SOAP code.
    2. Throw an "exception" containing said data.
    3. Automatically harvest the data from ExceptionCollection.com.
    4. Profit.

    I wonder if these people have thought about the insecure/immoral/illegal ways this service could be used and have taken steps to prevent that.

  • A better solution (Score:5, Informative)

    by jdh28 ( 19903 ) <jdh28NO@SPAMbigfoot.com> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:23AM (#13556004) Homepage

    This application [codeproject.com] is better in that it collects all the relevant information into a zip file (including a stack dump), and helps the user to e-mail it to you. It works in C/C++ (Windows only) and doesn't require any third party involvement.

    We use it in a deployed product and it works very well.

    john

  • Thanks, but.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by barzok ( 26681 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:29AM (#13556046)
    I think I'll stick with recording my exception logs in my own database where I have some measure of security around it, and can look at all of them, not the last 100.
  • This sounds similar to the BugzScout support in FogBugz (www.fogcreek.com), except that there the errors get sent to your own database on your own web site, and are not limited to the last 100. Definitely cool and valuable to track where your application is breaking, and have the ability to report back to customers whether a specific problem is fixed, being worked on, or needs help to track down.

  • whatever happened to.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by amodm ( 876842 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:33AM (#13556067)
    old style logging. why not just log the exception to a file (as its usually done), and mail it to the programmers at a regular interval. why waste so much of bandwidth, especially in the case where things go horribly wrong and exceptions are thrown just about everywhere.

    also, is this mechanism asynchronous ? coz synchronous would mean a lot of latency added to that particular thread, since things are now getting reported to some remote portal.

    IMHO, its just another wasteful use of web services. just coz its the fashionable term these days doesn't mean it should be used for all purposes.

    web services for exception reporting.....aarrgghhhh !!!

    • Log file & safety (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 )
      Just keeping the exceptions in the logfiles so you can literary put anything in the exception what you want, not having to wonder if some debug information which happens to be equal to a clients transaction wanders around on the network or even the internet. Plus logfiles can be analyzed too, enough handy tools around for that too (I use vi).

      • Re:Log file & safety (Score:3, Interesting)

        by azaris ( 699901 )

        Plus logfiles can be analyzed too, enough handy tools around for that too (I use vi).

        You have a magical version of 'vi' that penetrates the user's firewall, reads their logfiles over the Internet and reports back?

    • old style logging. why not just log the exception to a file (as its usually done), and mail it to the programmers at a regular interval. why waste so much of bandwidth, especially in the case where things go horribly wrong and exceptions are thrown just about everywhere.

      Having an app that has nothing to do with e-mail start sending out e-mail is a faux pas. How does it even do it? Does it ask the user for mail preferences? Does it sniff around for an SMTP host? Does it just blast stuff out and run into a

      • Huh ? I don't know how you do that in your part of the world, over here we just have a mail component in the server-side software that generates an error email in the exception handler and mails it to an address configured in the server process by some means you like (config file, hardcoded (*ugh*), you name it). Not much more bother than using some remote service.
        • Well what if it's a desktop app deployed in thousands of sites around the world?
          • The whole topic is about webserver SOAP exceptions.
            The understanding is that you have some control over your own web installation.

            Of course dealing with an end user client installation the rules are a little different, but thats not even part of the discussion here.
          • Depends on what you want to do: If you want to use the information only in case of critical errors log to a file/windows system log/whatever and either access it remotely if it's in your intranet or ask the user/on-site admin to mail you the respective info.

            If there are no privacy concerns you just mail the respective exception info to somewhere as described above (sending email from any kind of app should be easy in all current programming environments), and if you want to be nice and want to inform the us

  • Great, but have to be careful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CrazedWalrus ( 901897 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:37AM (#13556089) Journal
    I used to do something like this using my personal web site. I didn't use it for exception reporting -- just for publishing generic statistics about our production stream. I could then monitor them remotely from my cell phone's web browser.

    The key thing to be concerned about (as others have observed) is that any messages sent must be sufficiently generic so as not to give away vital information to the outside world.

    When I published my stats, I used abbreviations that only I understood followed by percentages. That's it. If someone else saw it, they wouldn't understand it, and, even if they did, it was just non-vital aggregate information that wouldn't do them any good anyway.

    This is the maximum level that such exception reporting could (wisely) rise to, and, as such, would be of limited value. I know from my own experience at large companies that log/exception output tends to contain things like userIDs, passwords, and server names, which could easily find itself passed along through these folks' API.

    For this reason, it seems like a good service if installed internally, but a bad idea beyond proof of concept for anything larger than a mom-and-pop, where a single programmer knows and understands the whole system and can send sufficiently vague exceptions.
  • Most businesses I know have ways of finding out when their application crashes. It's not much harder than putting some code into the page it goes to when you do get an exception, and having it email you things like the stack trace, and other important information. That's just the basic one, but a full fledged web system with database is the other end of the spectrum. Basically stuff like this isn't that hard to implement on your own, and gives you much better control in the end.

  • Sensitve Info In Exception Information? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pants75 ( 708191 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:45AM (#13556131)
    Remember to strip out an connection strings/password etc from you exception info if you're think of using this...

    Why you would, I don't know. But still.

    Pete

  • solution vs problem? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AnObfuscator ( 812343 ) <onering AT phys DOT ufl DOT edu> on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @08:45AM (#13556132) Homepage
    is this as cool as it looks, or a solution in search of a problem?

    Or? What kind of nerd ARE you?! Duh, it's BOTH!

    In fact, a good case could be made that it looks so damn cool BECAUSE it is a solution in search of a problem!

  • One obvious problem with such a scheme is that most users won't update the software every time a release is made available.

    Suppose you fix a bug and release a new version. It will be some time before many people have switched to the new version and so you will, in the meantime, continue to get the same bug reports for a bug you've already exterminated.

    The clear result is that of the latest 100 bug reports received, most will likely be completely useless.
  • Years ago applications were exepcted to just work - from a user point of view. But with the increased complexity of applications the user is becoming increasingly involved in the later stage testing and development of applications. This is particularly true in open source development, where the development team need to use every possible test scenerio available.

    Although this thing isn't vastly developed, I think we are going to see a lot more services available to developers to help them better integrate

  • An exception has occured (Score:3, Funny)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @09:08AM (#13556300) Homepage Journal
    Exception: Could not handle error: an additonal exception was encountered
    at com.example.util.BaseExceptionHandler() Line 450
    ...
    Root Cause:
    OutOfMemoryError: Out of memory during exception construction
    at Exception() Line 5
    ...
    Root Cause:
    IOException: Could not connect to exceptionollection.com
    at com.ExceptionCollection.reportException() Line 127
    ...
    Root Cause:
    ApplicationException: HelloWorld program is too simple
    at com.example.webapp.HelloWorld.print() Line 907
    ...
  • TFA:Your programs can be written in C#/VB.NET, Java, VB6, Delphi, C++, or any other SOAP-enabled language

    I lack to see anything apart from .NET code.

    For .NET, we provide a compiled component (DLL file)

    ?!. Not even .NET.
  • I have been doing this for my company for the last four years. Capturing Exception and Workstation information from a user running our windows based application, including a callstack trace, then sending it back via HTTP to an open source web based bug tracker which I customized a "postBug.php" for. Developers simply login the bug tracker and watch incomming reports. Users also get a bug # which they can reference if they contact our support lines. The windows code is in Delphi, but can be ported to anyt
  • I can see this being useful for hosting providers, such as mine that for security reasons do not allow access to the io.* package in .NET. Also nice for a consolodating log messages in a cluster/farm. For mission critical stuff, you can't beat a log file, unless maybe you run out of disk space.
  • If my code throws an exception, I expect it to get caught and handled. If the exception is frequent and represents a bug in my code, it should bloody well have been isolated and ironed out in testing 'BEFORE' releasing it to the wider and stupider world.

    If I'm going to keep a log of my exception, I'll do it for >100 exception and log these locally in a format which I can write a script to analyse and clear out, running in my own dev environment. I don't want my code to break when their soap daemon di

  • I think every freshman computer science major has spent hours waiting for Microsoft to get back to them after submitting an error report on their crashed program. This will probably work the same way.
  • I hope they don't try to patent this feature. Because I implemented it in 1997, as did several other consultancies building Java (and other) based websites for distributed companies. It is cool, though, if I do say so myself.

  • Exceptions? (Score:2, Funny)

    by irablum ( 914844 )
    I don't know about you guys, but I don't have any bugs in my code. It works perfectly the first time. No doubt. Never happens. Nothing ever breaks. Ever.
    hah.
    so there.

    at java.util.zip.InflaterInputStream.fill(InflaterInp utStream.java:215)
    at java.util.zip.InflaterInputStream.read(InflaterInp utStream.java:134)
    at java.util.zip.ZipInputStream.read(ZipInputStream.j ava:139)
  • Is this as cool as it looks, or a solution in search of a problem?"

    Looks more like a free advertisement.

  • Isn't this a poor man's very late copy of Dr. Watson [microsoft.com] which has been around for a number of years and is also free ... in addition to providing nice core dumps of the applications which crashed, whether they are MS or not.

    MS seems to be first by quite a ways on this one.

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