R is for Robustness

© Photographer Stephanie Raines | Agency: Dreamstime.com

Robustness is a quality that saves your application from crashing and burning every time the unexpected happens.

And, believe me, in business software you should expect the unexpected.

Frequently.

Many of the things I have or will cover in this series will naturally lead to more robust applications. Things like defensive design stop your code being tripped up by unexpected data, and validation helps stop bad data appearing in the first place. Insulation and separation help break down a monster meal into bite sized chunks. Small chunks are easier to code and test, and to be confident they are working properly.

Even with all the above, your code will choke sometimes. It might not even be your fault. Servers crash. Network connections fail. What happens next depends on you.

Suppose your user is entering the final line of a fifty line purchase order when the system crashes. Good robust design will ensure that the user has lost as little work as possible if the worst happens. This means keeping track of what's been done up to the most recent point possible - in a way that it can be resumed later. In this example, you don't want to have to start off again at line one. You really want to find everything held safe at least up to line forty nine, leaving you to finish off what you were doing before the gremlins struck.

This is not rocket science. In fact, why only cater for system-generated gremlins? Users sometimes need to "crash out" of long and complicated tasks too. Forgot some of the details you needed to enter? Need to go and check something out half-way through? Phone rings and you really need to deal with it, which involves abandoning your transaction to do something else? Urgent need for the washroom? Allowing your users to leave a complicated task half finished, do something else, and come back later is a darned useful design feature. One that adds inherent robustness to your system.

This is all about bullet-proofing your application. I've more to say about bullet-proofing your business function too, which will come in a later post about Unhappy Paths.