I read a blog entry somewhere in the past week about this topic and wish I could find it again. If you know the permalink, send it to me please. I guess that every one has their own view about this topic but I practice both approaches. I try to handle exceptions that I know will possibly come up like a connection that should be open but is not, a file that is locked by another process, etc. My concern is that I am noticing that some developers use exception prevention exclusively and by-pass exception handling. Is this a wide-spread practice? Surely it is not a best practice but I have to wonder how many people are using this approach?!?!?!