High Level Requirement Specification

Enhanced Error Reporting

Reference	Techreq.ErrorReporting
Referenced Use-cases	OnDex QtlMicroarray
Dependencies
Champion	StuartOwen
Status	PLANNED for 1.4

	Taverna 1.3	Taverna 2.0
Priority	1
Rough estimate	WEEK(s)	WEEK(s)

Overview

Currently some of the errors reported back to the user are not particularly user friendly, particularly when expressed to a Biologist rather than a Computer Engineer. This requirement involves capturing these errors and replacing the error messages with something more understandable.

Overall Goals

Report to the user errors that are more descriptive of the possible cause of the problem and possible solutions. Also build in a mechanism for easily adding new error messages as they arise.

Errors should be classified and assigned a severity. Taverna should then be able to determine appropriate action according to the severity of an error based upon actions predefined by the user.

Assessment

However, an ongoing requirement will be for all developers to improve on bad error messages as they are found.

Affected Components

Taverna workbench, Freefluo Enactment engine.

Key Tasks

A suggested approach might be:

• Identify the error messages that need describing
• Create a resource file that describes the errors in plain english, together with suggested solutions.
• Map the error messages to the descriptions, for e.g. using reg-expressions
• Update the UI to display error descriptions instead of (or as well as) the orignal error message.
• Classification of errors
• Update Tavernas error handling to allow it to determine a predefined action according to the classification of an error.

Appendix