Issue - 209 - Inconsistent repeated compensation fault behavior

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Issue - 209 - Inconsistent repeated compensation fault behavior

Status: received
Date added: 20 May 2005
Categories: Compensation
Date submitted: 19 May 2005
Submitter: Yaron Y. Goland
Description:

Section 13.3.3 states:

> "Invoking a compensation handler that has not been installed is 
> equivalent to the empty activity (it is a no-op)—this ensures that fault 
> handlers do not have to rely on state to determine which nested scopes 
> have completed successfully."

Section 14.7 states:

> "If an installed compensation handler is invoked more than once during 
> the execution of a process instance, a compliant implementation MUST 
> throw the standard bpws:repeatedCompensation fault."

The point of the 13.3.3 language was to let programmers not worry if a compensation handler for a particular scope has been installed or not. But now we have a situation where if a scope's compensation handlers didn't happen to be installed and you call it twice then nothing bad happens. But if the scope's compensation handler did happen to be installed and you call it twice then you get a fault. This seems to me to be inconsistent.
Submitter’s proposal: We should change the language to specify that the first time you call the compensation handler for a scope then if the scope doesn't have a compensation handler nothing happens, if the scope does have a compensation handler then compensation occurs. However the second time you call for compensation of a scope it is an error in all cases. Note that this would also apply to calling <compensate/>. E.g. two calls to <compensate/> in the same scope is an error.
Changes: 20 May 2005 - new issue

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