When is it appropriate to use error codes?

Question

In languages that support exception objects (Java, C#), when is it appropriate to use error codes? Is the use of error codes ever appropriate in typical enterprise applicati

Answer 1

I'm a newbie to stack overflow but...

I believe that error codes tend to be used or useful for dealing with erroneous situations that require an end-user of sorts to get involved to rectify a situation. If your code is to be maintained by another developer then exceptions is the way to go. However, in a situation where there is a problem:

• in the environment that your application is running

• with communication between your app and some other entity (web server, database, socket, etc)

• that a device or device driver indicates (hardware failure maybe?)

then error codes may make sense. For example, if your app attempted to log into a database on behalf of your end-user, but the DB was unreachable for authentication (DB is off-line, cable is unplugged) then an error code/description combo might help the end-user rectify the problem.

Again at the developer/engineer level who will be able to touch the source code (traditional debugging and testing techniques) and modify it, use exceptions.

Hope this helps...

--jqpdev