Error recovery for secmail

[Craig Russell <cr...@oracle.com>]

Here’s what error recovery currently looks like:

hit an error. usually this is “host unavailable” whatever that means. Happens “a lot”.

Red button “Continue?”

If continue, ignore the error and try the next operation.

This error recovery works for cases where there is a temporary error. At the first error, abandon the current operation and resubmit. Then, the operations that succeeded in the past will now fail. Continue is the appropriate response. Continue to continue until success.

Here’s what would be more helpful.

Hit an error. For “host unavailable”, prompt user for (abort), (retry), (ignore). I never thought MS DOS had such well-designed error options. But there it is.

(abort) would abandon the effort. User goes back to filling the form in the left pane.
(retry) would retry the current failed operation. Usually this will succeed.
(ignore) would abandon the current failed operation and continue with the rest of the tasks.

Having three options here would cater for all of the errors I’ve encountered in the last few months of using the tool.

Craig L Russell
Architect
craig.russell@oracle.com
P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

Re: Error recovery for secmail

[Sam Ruby <ru...@intertwingly.net>]

On Fri, Dec 9, 2016 at 7:43 PM, Craig Russell <cr...@oracle.com> wrote:
> Here’s what error recovery currently looks like:
>
> hit an error. usually this is “host unavailable” whatever that means. Happens “a lot”.
>
> Red button “Continue?”
>
> If continue, ignore the error and try the next operation.
>
> This error recovery works for cases where there is a temporary error. At the first error, abandon the current operation and resubmit. Then, the operations that succeeded in the past will now fail. Continue is the appropriate response. Continue to continue until success.
>
> Here’s what would be more helpful.
>
> Hit an error. For “host unavailable”, prompt user for (abort), (retry), (ignore). I never thought MS DOS had such well-designed error options. But there it is.
>
> (abort) would abandon the effort. User goes back to filling the form in the left pane.
> (retry) would retry the current failed operation. Usually this will succeed.

Just to be clear: if the current operation has five tasks, and the
failure occurs on the third, this would retry the third operation?

> (ignore) would abandon the current failed operation and continue with the rest of the tasks.

And again, if the current operation has five tasks, and the failure
occurs on the third, this would continue with the fourth?

> Having three options here would cater for all of the errors I’ve encountered in the last few months of using the tool.

Shouldn't be difficult.

> Craig L Russell
> Architect
> craig.russell@oracle.com
> P.S. A good JDO? O, Gasp!

- Sam Ruby