Generally, in software design, which of the options below is preferred when there is a problem or error with a resource such as a database or file?
- Show an error message
- Do not show an error message and act as though the resource was empty (eg. do not populate a GUI component)]
For example, should the user see an empty DataGrid following which they complain, or should there be an error message? Which is better?
I don’t see this as an either/or. Also, we need to consider all “users” of the system.
First consider the UI. Let’s consider a contrived general case: you are populating a UI by calling a service which in turn uses a couple of of databases (for example a “current data” and an “historic data”) database.
There are at least these possibilities:
Then also consider your application’s semantics. Can your applciation procede in a “degraded” mode if all the data cannot be retrieved? For example, we can’t query the history but that doesn’t stop us creating a new item.,
Now also consider the roles here. There’s the person using the UI, there’s also support and maintenance people who need to know about and fix problems.
My general rules:
or