#26 Switch to using unchecked exceptions throughout the API

[Anonymous]

Nearly all HAPI exceptions are checked. Because HAPI is a message processing toolkit, most exceptional conditions are unrecoverable, as in not recoverable without system administrator or user interaction. That situation typically calls for RuntimeException derivates instead of Exception derivates, and would remove a lot of boilerplate when using the API.

Existing code impact would be minimal.

[Christian Ohr]

I would support this - checked exceptions are used way to often in HAPI (e.g. HL7Exception).
However, changing it to extend from RuntimeException would elliminate the throws clauses and therefore breaks backwards-compatibility.

[Jens Villadsen]

However, is this backward compatibilty really needed?