Where should a Java service catch, translate, or rethrow exceptions?

Places exception handling at boundaries that can recover, add meaningful context, or translate abstraction levels while preserving the cause.

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TL;DR

I catch an exception where the current layer can recover, choose an alternative, add meaningful context, or translate it into that layer's contract. A repository can translate a vendor-specific persistence exception into an application data-access failure while preserving the original cause. A web boundary can map a known domain error to an appropriate response. If a method cannot improve the outcome, it should usually let the exception propagate rather than catch and immediately rethrow it.

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Layered failure ownership, exception translation, logging, retry safety, API errors, and observability.

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Core answer
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Overview
An exception should be caught where code can make a real decision, not automatically at every method in the call chain.
I catch an exception where the current layer can recover, choose an alternative, add meaningful context, or translate it into that layer's contract. A repository can translate a vendor-specific persistence exception into an application data-access failure while preserving the original cause. A web boundary can map a known domain error to an appropriate response. If a method cannot improve the outcome, it should usually let the exception propagate rather than catch and immediately rethrow it.
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Stronger answer
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I avoid logging the same failure in every layer because that creates duplicate alerts without more information. The layer that finally handles or terminates the operation normally logs once with request or trace context. Translation should preserve the cause and stable diagnostic details without leaking SQL, credentials, or internal stack traces to clients. Domain validation failures, unavailable dependencies, conflicts, and unexpected bugs should not all collapse into one generic status or message.

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Details

Catching and logging at every layer.
Throwing a new exception without preserving the cause.
Returning internal exception messages to clients.
Retrying every exception without idempotency or a time budget.

Where should a Java service catch, translate, or rethrow exceptions?

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