Issue - 135 - Clarifying forcedTermination Handler

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Issue - 135 - Clarifying forcedTermination Handler

Status: open
Categories: Syntax and validation
Date added: 15 Jul 2004
Submitter: Yaron Y. Goland
Date submitted: 15 July 2004
Description: The name 'forcedTermination' is really confusing to me because the 
forcedTermination handler is not called when the terminate activity is 
called. This makes sense since terminate means 'die NOW' not 'first run 
a bunch of clean up and then die' but the name caused me a lot of confusion.

The semantics of the forcedTermination handler, that it can't throw any faults, makes sense but I think the way we specify fault handlers could cause programmers some serious headaches. For example, if someone defines a catchAll handler and they don't define a forcedTermination handler then if a scope is killed the catchAll handler will catch the forcedTermination fault. However the catchAll handler's logic probably thinks it can throw its own faults, which will normally be true unless the fault it caught was a forcedTermination fault. Yuck.
Submitter's proposal: Change the name to something like faultCleanUpHandler.

We should probably define an implicit forcedTermination handler on all scopes. If someone doesn't define an explicit forcedTermination handler then the implicit one (which will do nothing) will run. This means that catchAll will never catch a forcedTermination fault.
Changes: 15 Jul 2004 - new issue

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