Maximizing the Efficiency of Automation Solutions with Automation 360: Approaches for Developing Subtasks and Retry Framework

I present a solution that explores the use of A360 subtasks as a comparable concept to functions in programming. By leveraging subtasks as reusable and maintainable functions, users can efficiently develop customized high-quality automation solutions. Additionally, the paper introduces the retry framework, which allows for the automatic retrying of subtasks in the event of system or unknown exceptions. This framework enhances efficiency and reduces the manual effort required to retrigger bots. The A360 Subtask and Retry Framework templates provide valuable assistance to both professional and citizen developers, improving code quality, maintainability, and the overall efficiency and resiliency of automation solutions.

Global-to-Local Approach to Rigorously Developing Distributed System with Exception Handling

Cooperative distributed system covers a wide range of applications such as the systems for industrial controlling and business-to-business trading, which are usually safety-critical. Coordinated exception handling （CEH） refers to exception handling in the cooperative distributed systems, where exceptions raised on a peer should be dealt with by all relevant peers in a consistent manner. Some CEH algorithms have been proposed. A crucial problem in using these algorithms is how to develop the peers which are guaranteed coherent in both normal execution and exceptional execution. Straightforward testing or model checking is very expensive. In this paper, we propose an effective way to rigorously develop the systems with correct CEH behavior. Firstly, we formalize the CEH algorithm by proposing a Peer Process Language to precisely describe the distributed systems and their operational semantics. Then we dig out a set of syntactic conditions, and prove its sufficiency for system coherence. Finally~ we propose a global-to-local approach, including a language describing the distributed systems from a global perspective and a projection algorithm, for developing the systems. Given a well-formed global description, a set of peers can be generated automatically. We prove the system composed of these peers satisfies the conditions, that is, it is always coherent and correct for CEH.

Architecting Fault Tolerance with Exception Handling: Verification and Validation

When building dependable systems by integrating untrusted software components that were not originally designed to interact with each other, it is likely the occurrence of architectural mismatches related to assumptions in their failure behaviour. These mismatches, if not prevented during system design, have to be tolerated during runtime. This paper presents an architectural abstraction based on exception handling for structuring fault-tolerant software systems. This abstraction comprises several components and connectors that promote an existing untrusted software element into an idealised fault-tolerant architectural element. Moreover, it is considered in the context of a rigorous software development approach based on formal methods for representing the structure and behaviour of the software architecture. The proposed approach relies on a formal specification and verification for analysing exception propagation, and verifying important dependability properties, such as deadlock freedom, and scenarios of architectural reconfiguration. The formal models are automatically generated using model transformation from UML diagrams： component diagram representing the system structure, and sequence diagrams representing the system behaviour. Finally, the formal models are also used for generating unit and integration test cases that are used for assessing the correctness of the source code. The feasibility of the proposed architectural approach was evaluated on an embedded critical case study.

Automatic recovery from resource exhaustion exceptions by collecting leaked resources

Despite the availability of garbage collectors, programmers must manually manage non-memory finite system resources such as file descriptors. Resource leaks can gradually consume all available resources and cause programs to raise resource exhaustion exceptions. However, programmers commonly provide no effective recovery approach for resource exhaustion exceptions, which often causes programs to halt without completing their tasks. In this paper, we propose to automatically recover programs from resource exhaustion exceptions caused by resource leaks. We transform programs to catch resource exhaustion exceptions, collect leaked resources, and then retry the failure code. A resource collector is designed to identify leaked resources and safely release them. We implement our approach for Java programs. Experimental results show that our approach can successfully handle resource exhaustion exceptions caused by reported resource leaks and allow programs to complete their tasks with an average execution time increase of 2.52% and negligible bytecode size increase.