error handling system for web applications

managing web applications have never been so easy. the external / internal errors which occurs all the time due to DB connection failure or some other 3rd party service connection failure which are so hard to predict.

i was always been thinking about this issue. many experts suggested that we should e-mail the error with relevant information to sys administrator or someone who's responsible. but sometimes it is not so easy to do so. because most of the time the errors are reciprocal (means one error leads to another and it leads to another and the chain continues)

and by the way most of the people now use RSS feeds to get to know what is happening all over the internet rather than searching and browsing the web.

so what i was thinking about is to log all the errors in a database table rather than the plain text file. to accomplish that task in PHP you can simply use the function set_error_handler and from there define a function which can insert that specific errors details into the DB. after that we can have separate PHP file which can generate a dynamic RSS file containing the latest error messages on request and which supports some kind of authentication.

and simply from there onwards you can add that link to your favorite RSS reader, and then you can be simply informed about all those error messages which occurred within the application you provided to the customer.

and if you wish to further this error handling system you can separate FATAL errors, WARNINGS and NOTICES or a custom clarification of all the error messages.

praveen gunasekara.
"technology reinvented"

Desktop application Vs Web Application

is this the end of the desktop applications era?

you may ask why i said so. even though i'm a PHP developer, when it comes to large scale projects i always recommended to have it as a desktop application. but now I've changed my mind. web applications was lacking one thing for sure. it was the ability to perform multiple tasks at once. but today this is totally different.

today i've dowloaded the eyeOS.
"eyeOS is an Open Source Web Desktop Environment, commonly known as Web Operating System (Web OS) or Web Office"

it was simply superb. the total file size of the source files was just 1Mb. then i extracted it to "/var/www" and then i opened an web browser and typed "localhost/eyeOS" . and there was a warning message saying that ./etc/ folder needs 777 access level. so i changed the access level and then refreshed the browser window. then it asked for the root password, and it was all.

this is eye candy. for sure.

the eyeOS seems to be the most interesting web application i've ever used. with its endless opportunities i cant even imagine what the web is going to be.

installing applications is really simple. all you need to do is download the eyeOS application from the web and open the "eyeApps" application in the eyeOS menu. and then click "install apps" button placed top-left of that window. and then just link to tar.gz file you've downloaded from the application library.

i'm going to install this in my server. so then i'll be having access to all my files at the same place and i'm getting the authority to manage all my files in one browser window.