Exceptions in database systems can be used for two differ- ent purposes: to store data not conforming to the description provided by the database schema, that is, exceptional data; and to handle excep- tional situations during processing, that is, the usual execution excep- tions of programming languages. In this paper we survey approaches to both kinds of exceptions in OODBMSs, we discuss some uses of excep- tions peculiar to databases, and relate exceptions with triggers, a typical database functionality.