Compensating Transaction

Kind: mechanism

Layer: Execution Core

Aliases: Compensating Action

Record: architecture:compensating-transaction

Severity: contextual

Scope: workflow, distributed transaction

Canonical: Ontology

A mechanism that undoes the business effect of a completed step when a later step of the workflow fails.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Outbox Pattern and before Append-Only Log.

Requires

• Reversible/Compensable Step

Reinforces

• Saga Pattern
• Resilience

Enables

• Failure Recovery

Conflicts with

• Irreversible Side Effects

In tension with

• Business Complexity

Tensions

• Compensating Transaction / Business Complexity

Violated by

• Irreversible Side Effects

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Event / Messaging / Asynchronous Architecture

Refactors

• Atomicity

Linked from

• Event / Messaging / Asynchronous Architecture
• Error Handling / Resilience
• Transactions / State / Concurrency
• Event Messaging Async
• Severity levels
• The resolutions