activity timing out on large exception

Question

As there is 32K limit on activity result I see activities just timing out when result is larger while it is OK for normal cases, in case when activity is throwing an exception I cannot see the error reason.  
  
Specifically we are using SWF Java Flow Framework. Besides we use Hibernate with Spring. When data access layer throws  exception, its text (including all the stack) is longer than 32K. In this case we see no activity failure, but just timeout. We could resolve it using custom serializer, but I would prefer a solution using fewer custom components.  
  
Is there such a solution?

Answer

I'm not sure what generic solution would help here. Due to the size limit some information must be lost. IMHO logging the exception from the activity and returning a different exception that misses the stack trace (or part of it) is a reasonable workaround.

Answer

Thanks a lot. We'll go that way.

Answer

It looks like (https://github.com/aws/aws-swf-flow-library/blob/master/src/main/java/com/amazonaws/services/simpleworkflow/flow/pojo/POJOActivityImplementation.java#L100) that DataConverter is used to serialize the exception. So you can create a custom DataConverter to implement this logic.

Answer

Thank you Maxim!  
  
Is there any standard mechanism to implement a "stardard global" exception handler in between completion of activity and activity worker process?  
  
Thank you

activity timing out on large exception

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