Defensive programming (or I call it fail-safe programming) is a must for any type of service / daemon.
I employ a healthy dose of exception trapping and logging, and I get an email whenever it happens.
People aren't perfect, but you can anticipate a lot of failures. It usually involves bad data as in your case. Each time you get bitten, change your code so it fails gracefully.
Agreed. Be as defensive as possible, trap all exceptions (this allowed me to identify the problem and fix it very quickly, but I still had to step in and fix it) and validate absolutely everything no matter how unlikely it seems. Also go over every system and ask "what if an unexpected error happens, will it take the system down? will it prevent other requests/tasks/users from working?"
I employ a healthy dose of exception trapping and logging, and I get an email whenever it happens.
People aren't perfect, but you can anticipate a lot of failures. It usually involves bad data as in your case. Each time you get bitten, change your code so it fails gracefully.