This section discusses the two basic methods Natural offers for the
handling of application errors: default processing and application-specific
processing. Furthermore, it describes the options you have to enable the
application specific error processing: coding an ON ERROR
statement block within a programming object or using a separate error
transaction program.
Finally, this section gives an overview of the features that are provided to configure Natural's error processing behavior, to retrieve information on an error, to process or debug an application error.
This document covers the following topics:
For information on error handling in a Natural RPC environment, see Handling Errors in the Natural Remote Procedure Call documentation.
When an error occurs in a Natural application, Natural will by default proceed in the following way:
Natural terminates the execution of the currently running application object;
Natural issues an error message;
Natural returns to command input mode.
"Command input mode" means that, depending on your Natural
configuration, the Natural main menu, the NEXT command prompt, or
a user-defined startup menu may appear.
The displayed error message contains the Natural error number, the corresponding message text and the affected Natural object and line number where the error has occurred.
Because after the occurrence of an error the execution of the affected
application object is terminated, the status of any pending database
transactions may be affected by actions required by the setting of the
profile parameter ETEOP. Unless
Natural has issued an END
TRANSACTION statement as a result of the settings of these
parameters, a BACKOUT
TRANSACTION statement is issued when Natural returns to
command input mode.
Natural enables you to adapt the error processing if the default error processing does not meet your application’s requirements. Possible reasons to establish an application specific error processing may be:
The information on the error is to be stored for further analysis by the application developer.
The application execution is to be continued after error recovery, if possible.
A specific transaction handling is necessary.
Because the execution of the affected Natural application object is
terminated after an application error has occurred, the status of the pending
database transactions may be influenced by actions which are triggered by the
settings of the profile parameter
ETEOP.
Therefore, further transaction handling (END TRANSACTION or
BACKOUT TRANSACTION
statement) has to be performed by the application’s error processing.
To enable the application specific error processing, you have the following options:
You may code an ON ERROR statement block within a
programming object.
You may use a separate error transaction program.
These options are described in the following sections.
You may use the ON
ERROR statement to intercept execution time errors within the
application where an error occurs.
From within an ON ERROR statement block, it is possible to
resume application execution on the current level or on a superior level.
Moreover, you may specify an ON ERROR statement in multiple
objects of an application in order to process any errors that have occurred on
subordinate levels. Thus, application specific error processing may exactly be
tailored to the application’s needs.
ON ERROR Statement
Block
You may exit from an ON ERROR statement block by specifying
one of the following statements:
Application execution is resumed on the current level.
Error processing is assumed to be complete and application execution is resumed on the superior level.
Error processing is assumed to be complete and the "fetched" program is executed.
Natural stops the execution of the affected program, ends the application and returns to command input mode.
The execution of the Natural application is stopped and also the Natural session is terminated.
If the execution of the ON ERROR statement block is not
terminated by one of these statements, the error is percolated to the Natural
object on the superior level for processing by an ON ERROR
statement block that exists there.
If none of the Natural objects on any of the superior levels contains
an ON ERROR statement block, but if an error transaction program
has been specified (as described in the
next section),
this error transaction program will receive control.
If none of the Natural objects on any of the superior levels contains
an ON ERROR statement block and no error transaction program has
been specified there, Natural's default error processing will be performed as
described above.
You may specify an error transaction program in the following places:
In the profile parameter ETA.
If Natural Security is installed, within the Natural Security library profile; see Components of a Library Profile in the Natural Security documentation.
Within a Natural object by assigning the name of the program which is
to receive control in the event of an error condition as a value to the system
variable *ERROR-TA,
using an ASSIGN,
COMPUTE or
MOVE statement.
If you assign the name of an error transaction program to the system
variable *ERROR-TA during the Natural session,
this assignment supersedes an error transaction program specified using the
profile parameter ETA. Regardless of whether you use the
ETA profile parameter or assign a value to the system
variable *ERROR-TA, the error transaction program names
are not saved and restored by Natural for different levels of the call
hierarchy. Therefore, if you assign a name to the system variable
*ERROR-TA in a Natural object, the specified
program will be invoked to process any error that occurs in the current Natural
session after the assignment.
On the one hand, if you specify an error transaction program by using
the profile parameter ETA, an error transaction is
defined for the complete Natural session without having the need for individual
assignments in Natural objects. On the other hand, the method of assigning a
program to the system variable *ERROR-TA provides
more flexibility and, for example, allows you to have different error
transaction programs in different application branches.
If the system variable *ERROR-TA is reset
to blank, Natural's default error processing will be performed as described
above.
If an error transaction program is specified and an application error occurs, execution of the application is terminated, and the specified error transaction program receives control to perform the following actions:
Analyze the error;
Log the error information;
Terminate the Natural session;
Continue the application execution by calling a program using the
FETCH statement.
Because the error transaction program receives control in the same way as if it had been called from the command prompt, it is not possible to resume application execution in one of the Natural objects that were active at the time when the error occurred.
If the Natural profile parameter SYNERR is set to
ON and a syntax error occurs at compile time, the error
transaction program will also receive control.
An error transaction program must be located in the library to which you are currently logged on or in a current steplib library.
When an error occurs, Natural executes a STACK TOP DATA statement and
places the following information at the top of the stack:
| Field Contents | Format/Length | |
|---|---|---|
| Natural error number | N4 if session parameter
SG is set
to OFF; N5 if SG=ON |
|
| Number of the line where the error has occurred | N4 | |
| Status Code: | A1 | |
C |
Command processing error (the line number will be zero) | |
L |
Logon processing error (the line number will be zero) | |
O |
Object (execution) time error | |
R |
Error on remote server (in conjunction with Natural RPC) | |
S |
Syntax error | |
| Name of the Natural object where the error has occurred | A8 | |
Level
number of the Natural object where the error has occurred; if the
level number of the Natural object is greater than 99, the value
99 will be stacked.
|
N2 | |
If the Natural profile parameter SYNERR is set to
OFF, the following information will be stacked in addition:
| Field Contents | Format/Length |
|---|---|
Level number of the Natural object where the
error has occurred; if the level number of the Natural object is less than or
equal to 99, the field content is identical to that of the level
number field of format/length N2 described above.
|
I4 |
If the Natural profile parameter SYNERR is set to
ON and a syntax error occurs at compile time, the level number
will be zero, and the following information will be stacked in addition:
| Field Contents | Format/Length |
|---|---|
| Position of the offending item in the source line | N3 |
| Length of the offending item | N3 |
This information can be retrieved in the error transaction program using
an INPUT statement.
Example:
DEFINE DATA LOCAL
1 #ERROR-NR (N5)
1 #LINE (N4)
1 #STATUS-CODE (A1)
1 #PROGRAM (A8)
1 #LEVEL (N2)
1 #LEVELI4 (I4)
1 #POSITION-IN-LINE (N3)
1 #LENGTH-OF-ERRTOKEN (N3)
END-DEFINE
IF *DATA > 6 THEN /* SYNERR = ON and a syntax error occurred
INPUT
#ERROR-NR
#LINE
#STATUS-CODE
#PROGRAM
#LEVEL
#POSITION-IN-LINE
#LENGTH-OF-ERRTOKEN
ELSE
INPUT /* other error
#ERROR-NR
#LINE
#STATUS-CODE
#PROGRAM
#LEVEL
#LEVELI4
END-IF
WRITE #STATUS-CODE
* DECIDE ON FIRST VALUE OF STATUS-CODE
* ... /* process error
* END-DECIDE
END
Some of the information placed on top of the stack is equivalent to the
contents of several system variables that are available in an
ON ERROR statement
block:
| Field Contents | Equivalent System Variable in ON ERROR Statement Block |
|---|---|
| Natural error number | *ERROR-NR |
| Number of the line where the error has occurred | *ERROR-LINE |
| Name of the Natural object where the error has occurred | *PROGRAM |
| Level number of the program where the error has occurred | *LEVEL |
If Natural Security is installed, the additional rules for the processing of logon errors apply. For further information, see Transactions in the Natural Security documentation.
Natural provides a variety of error processing related features that
Enable you to configure Natural’s error processing behavior;
Help you in retrieving information about errors that have occurred;
Support you in processing these errors;
Support you in debugging application errors.
These features can be grouped as follows:
The following profile parameters have an influence on the behavior of Natural in the event of an error:
| Profile Parameter | Purpose |
|---|---|
CPCVERR |
Conversion Error |
ETA |
Error Transaction Program |
ETEOP |
Issue END TRANSACTION at End of
Program
|
RCFIND |
Handling of Response Code 113 for
FIND Statement
|
RCGET |
Handling of Response Code 113 for
GET Statement
|
SYNERR
|
Control of Syntax Errors |
The following application related system variables can be used to locate an error or to obtain/specify the name of the program which is to receive control in the event of an error condition:
| System Variable | Content |
|---|---|
*ERROR-LINE |
Source-code line number of the statement that
caused an error.
See Example 1. |
*ERROR-NR |
Error number of the error which caused an
ON ERROR condition to be entered.
|
*ERROR-TA |
Name of the program which is to receive control
in the event of an error condition.
See Example 2. |
*LEVEL |
Level number of the Natural object where the error has occurred. |
*LIBRARY-ID |
Name of the library to which the user is currently logged on. |
*PROGRAM |
Name of the Natural object that is currently
being executed.
See Example 1. |
...
/*
ON ERROR
IF *ERROR-NR = 3009 THEN
WRITE 'LAST TRANSACTION NOT SUCCESSFUL'
/ 'HIT ENTER TO RESTART PROGRAM'
FETCH 'ONEEX1'
END-IF
WRITE 'ERROR' *ERROR-NR 'OCCURRED IN PROGRAM' *PROGRAM
'AT LINE' *ERROR-LINE
FETCH 'MENU'
END-ERROR
/*
...
...
*ERROR-TA := 'ERRORTA1'
/* from now on, program ERRORTA1 will be invoked
/* to process application errors
...
MOVE 'ERRORTA2' TO *ERROR-TA
/* change error transaction program to ERRORTA2
...
For further information on these system variables, see the corresponding sections in the System Variables documentation.
The following terminal command has an influence on the behavior of Natural in the event of an error:
| Terminal Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
%E= |
Activate/Deactivate Error Processing |
The following system commands provide additional information on an error situation or invoke the utilities for debugging or logging database calls:
| System Command | Purpose |
|---|---|
LASTMSG
|
Display additional information on the error situation which has occurred last. |
TECH
|
Display technical and other information about your Natural session, for example, information on the last error that occurred. |
The following application programming interfaces (APIs) are generally available for getting additional information on an error situation or to install an error transaction.
| API | Purpose |
|---|---|
USR0040N
|
Get type of last error. |
USR1016N
|
Display error level for copycode. |
USR2001N
|
Read information about last error. |
USR2006N
|
Get detailed message information. |
USR2007N |
Set/get RPC default server information. |
USR2010N
|
Display DB error information. |
USR2026N
|
Get TECH information.
|
USR2030N
|
Read dynamic error parts :1:,... |
USR3320N
|
Find user short error message from
FNAT or FUSER.
|
USR4214N
|
Display program level information. |
For further information, see SYSEXT - Natural Application Programming Interfaces in the Utilities documentation.