IsDatabaseUp returns true or throws exception

Question

I want to write an ASP.NET Web API endpoint that allows clients to check if database is running.

The method below is check if database is up by establishing a connection and running a dummy sql statement. If exception is thrown, the database is down. Thus, it always return true when it is up.

public interface IDatabaseHealthStatus {
  bool IsDatabaseUp();
}

public class DatabaseHealthStatus :IDatabaseHealthStatus {

    public bool IsDatabaseUp(){

      using(var con = new SqlConnection(connectionString)
      using(var cmd= new SqlCommand("SELECT 1", con)
      {
          con.Open();
         cmd.ExecuteReader();
         return true;  //always returns true, unless exception throws
      }    
    }

}

The calling method looks like below.

API controller action method:

[HttpGet]
public IHttpActionResult IsDatabaseUp(){

  databaseHealthStatus.IsDatabaseUp(); //return value is ignored. Exception is handled by global exception handler, if any
  return OK();

}

Questions:

1: IsDatabaseUp() returns boolean type, but it always returns true (not false), unless it throws exception, which might be confusing (that is, bool, only returns true, and exception). I don't want to catch exception within the method, and return false. Because I want global exception handler to handle it and log the exception. This way it makes the code cleaner by reducing try/catch block. But in this case, unless comment is put for the method, it might be confusing.

Is this the best way to return the result? What do you think?

Answer 1

The naming convention Is… implies that the function is a predicate, returning either true or false.

If you wanted to throw an exception when the database is down, then you might name the function RequireDatabaseUp(), returning void, instead. But that seems silly: why not just try performing a real SQL operation instead?

In summary, if you want to provide a function whose sole purpose is to determine whether the database is available, make it return true or false. If you prefer to have an exception thrown on failure, don't bother providing such a function at all.