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Free Web-Based Exception Reporting
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?"
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 to have a quality feedback agent, but I never saw it pop up or notify me in any way. Maybe it is silently calling home?
If your users are your testers, it's very important that you get as much detailed information from any problems that arise as you can. Ideally these bugs would have been fixed before it ever hit the doors, but in this day and age of rapid development and short production cycles, it's sometimes better to give a working version to the customer and update it periodically.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
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.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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 !!!
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?
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".
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