Error messages from service program procedures, was: Call back procedures

[Adam Glauser <adamglauser@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rick.Chevalier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> At this point the design looks like this:
> 1) Service program containing edit procedures common across multiple transactions.  One procedure per edit.  Each procedure returns a pass fail indicator and an error message as the first parameter.

You may want to reconsider the 'first parameter is error message' 
design.  That's how I started out doing things.  The extra overhead of 
passing in error-related parameters every time doesn't seem like much, 
but it gets really tiresome and IMO reduces readability of the code.

If I were starting from scratch, I would prefer the 'global error info' 
procedure suggested by Scott's article "Writing Reusable Service 
Programs"*, in particular the sections titled "Statelessness" and "Error 
Handling".