Recommendation for Compensation handling in case of failure

Community Support
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1

Would like some recommendations on how to handle compensation when the service you are trying to call during the compensation is down.

For example, let’s say I have service A,B,C,and D.

I need B and C to rollback on any exception of D.

Now, happy path is that all services (B and C) are up during the compensation phase and can be called when D fails.

But, what if those two services are down?

How can we guarantee that the compensation happens at a later date (near future)?

I can think of a few things but not sure if it’s correct.

  1. Setup separate “CompensationActivities” for both B and C and let them retry infinitely so we don’t block the main workflow and kick off a new child-workflow with those activities?

or

  1. Let the workflow run indefinitely blocked on the “compensate” methods defined in the B and C activities while they retry over and over?

My use case is one I posted before about our GiftCard service and needing to make sure that the customers balance is repaired during any system errors, even if the GiftCard service is down for a while, I need Temporal to make sure that when the service comes back up it can continue the “compensation” actions long after the workflow was started.

Any ideas/examples?

I’m still learning Temporal so sorry for any simple questions…

2

I would go with 2. There is no problem keeping the workflow open for a long time.