Question

I am using Spring Hibernate integration in my application and DAO classes are extending HibernateDaoSupport.
Suppose I save some object using the code
getHibernateTemplate().save(object);
As Spring Hibernate integration doesn’t mandate to write try-catch block, but suppose if any exception is thwron while saving that object.
Then what is the best way to handle it? I means should I catch it in the service layer and wrap it in some user defined excpetions.
Do I need to write try-catch in DAO layer method itself in case I want to log which method in DAO throws exception?

I have never used HibernateDaoSupport or Hibernate Template before so ignorant about exception handling. Please provide me your valuable inputs

Answer 1

The idea behind Spring using RuntimeException is that generally there are different types of exception:

• Exceptions that you want to recover from (such as a DuplicateKeyException if a record that you’re trying to insert already exists or the more general DataIntegrityViolationException if there was a DB constraint that was violated as a result of user input)
• Exceptions that you can’t recover from (the database is down)

For the first case, you may well handle the exception (either through a custom business exception, so that the view layer can redirect to the input page and provide a meaningful message)

For the second case, it would be easier to let the exception bubble up and have it handled by a generic exception handler that then displays a generic error page to the user. For this scenario it doesn’t make sense to wrap the exception in a custom exception as you won’t be able to recover. A blown up DB tends to be fatal.

So what I would do:

try {
   getHibernateTemplate().save(object);
} catch (DataIntegrityViolationException dive) {
   throw new BusinessValidationException(dive, "You've got the data wrong");
}