Data Acquisition Idea Exchange

In order to TDD code, one has to be able to isolate dependencies.  A very handy trick to isolate external dependencies is to create an interface with the same methods and properties signatures as the external class, and then create an empty class which inherits from the external dependency and implements the interface.

For example, I'm trying to isolate the HardwareResourceBase class, because I'm attempting to test some code the uses the result of SystemConfiguration.FindHardware("").

However, I cannot isolate the HardwareResourceBase class by doing:

public interface IHardwareResourceBase
{
  String UserAlias{get;}
  String MacAddress{get;|
  /* Other methods and properties of HardwareResourceBase */
}

public class HardwareResourceImpl : HardwareResourceBase, IHardwareResourceBase
{}

because the constructor to HardwareResourceBase is hidden.  In order to isolate HardwareResourceBase, I now have to create a full wrapper class, which is a major pain.

Please do not fully seal classes by hiding the constructor.  If a method should not be overriden, use the "sealed" keyword.

From what I can tell, there is one master DaqException that is used for everything that goes wrong.  This makes checking for certain exceptions extremely difficult, as you are now limited to checking the error message for certain strings.  This is fragile.

Please provide typed exceptions in the .NET DAQmx library.  For example, if a task times out, it should throw a "TaskTimeoutException", which might be a child of DaqException.  Or if the timing setup is invalid, the library would throw a "InvalidTimingConfigurationException".

Yes, I realize it's a bit of busy work to create a bunch of typed exceptions, but it makes error handling for consumers much easier.