A Rationale-based Model for Architecture Design Reasoning

7.1. The EFT system
7.1.8 Error reporting
The catching and reporting of errors is one of the most important aspects in a system
architecture. Exceptions and errors are imminent in any system. The timely reporting
of errors enables remedial actions to correct the exception sooner rather than later. The
requirement of the EFT system is to be able to log all errors and classify them by severity
(requirements R5 3 1 and R5 3 2 ). The classification of the errors define the severity
level of the errors and hence the urgency of the responses to handle the error.
Figure 7.11: Decisions to Architect Error Catching and Reporting
Figure 7.11 shows that in order to cater for the errors, the design had to reason about
where the errors would be reported. Since the system architecture is a dual-node system
and it could expand to a quad-node system, logging errors in a local device would mean that
administrators might not have a timely and centralised view of the error logs. Decision
AR27 considered that the error log should be centralised. It means that all software
modules must be able to send errors to the Error Server (C6 0 1 ) through a standard
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