Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Andrew J Pardoe

Michael M Magruder

Patrick Henri Dussud

Frank V Peschel-Gallee

Madhusudhan Talluri

Peter F Sollich

Rudi Martin

Scott D Mosier

Kumar Gaurav Khanna

Simon Jeremy Hall

Raja Krishnaswamy

Brian M Grunkemeyer

Manuel Alfred Fahndrich

Michael Barnett

Diana Milirud

Leif Kornstaedt

Gaye Oncul Kok

Melitta L G Andersen

Yi Lin

Gaurav Khanna

Jeffrey C Schwartz

Katherine E King

An exception handling system is described herein that provides one or more distinguished classes of software exceptions that are handled differently than other exceptions. The system treats a distinguished exception as a 'hard to catch' exception that is not passed to the catch block of program code unless a developer performs extra steps to acknowledge the distinguished nature of the exception and confirm that the program code is prepared to properly handle the exception. Exceptions that fall into this class are typically those that represent conditions from which normal exception handling practices cannot successfully recover, namely exceptions that corrupt application state. Accordingly, the system prevents the developer from catching these classes of exceptions by default unless the developer explicitly requests to have these exceptions delivered to the program code. Thus, the exception handling system encourages correct programming practices by preventing developer error by default.

Handling exceptions related to corrupt application state

An error handling system is described herein that provides a facility for controlling the behavior of software when the software violates a contract condition. The system provides configurable runtime behavior that takes place when a contract fails. The error handling system provides an event that a hosting application or other software code can register to handle and that the system invokes upon detecting a contract failure. The application's response to the event determines how the system handles the failure. If the event is unhandled, the system triggers an escalation policy that allows an administrator or application to specify how the system handles contract failures. Thus, the error handling system provides increased control over the handling of contract failures within software code.

Contract failure behavior with escalation policy

The efficient use of type descriptors with frozen objects. A frozen object might actually include several type descriptors, a primary type descriptor that is canonical according to a set of canonicalization rules, and an auxiliary type descriptor that is not identical to the primary type descriptor. The auxiliary type descriptor may be used to access the canonical type descriptor. When performing an operation, if the auxiliary type descriptor can be used to perform the operation, then that auxiliary type descriptor may be used. If the canonical type descriptor is to be used to perform the operation, the auxiliary type descriptor is used to gain access to the canonical primary type descriptor. The primary type descriptor is then used to perform the operation.

Type descriptor management for frozen objects

Mechanisms that allow frameworks significant flexibility in varying the library of common base classes in a manner that better suits the domain of applications served by the framework. Instead of providing the base class library, the runtime provides a data contract for the data structure of each base class. The frameworks can then define each base class in a custom way so long as the data contract is honored. Thus, for example, the framework may provide custom framework-specific methods and/or properties as is appropriate for the framework. Another framework might define the base classes in a different way.

Flexible base class library

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for mimicking functionality of an application platform. At runtime, an analysis is performed of an application platform to identify how a desired functionality is implemented by the application platform. When the analysis reveals that the application platform is using a known function that can be mimicked, a handshake with the application platform is bypassed and the desired functionality is mimicked. To mimic the functionality, the known function is started for the application platform that uses the desired functionality. An entry point of the known function is detected. Machine instructions are decoded in the known function. Code that mimics an effect of the machine instructions is generated. The code that mimics the effect of the machine instructions is then executed.

Mimicking of functionality exposed through an abstraction

An exception notification system is described herein that provides an early notification that a software exception has occurred before exception handling code has run. The exception notification system receives a registration request from program code to register a handler to receive an early notification when an exception occurs. When an exception occurs, the system raises an event that calls each registered handler. After the handler returns, the system performs normal exception handling, so that the early notification does not change existing exception-handling behavior. The exception notification system allows a program to inspect and log an exception before the program state has been modified by exception handling. The program code can capture detailed information about the cause of the exception to enable further offline analysis. Thus, the exception notification system allows developers to improve their programs by receiving more information about unexpected conditions in the program code.

Exception raised notification

Growing community of inventors

Bellevue, WA, United States of America

Andrew J Pardoe