Compensation framework for long running transactions

• US 20050193286A1
• Filed: 03/30/2005
• Published: 09/01/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 04/28/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Klein, Johannes, Meredith, Lucius Gregory, Andrews, Anthony Dean, Mehta, Bimal Kumar, Thatte, Satish Ramchandra, Levy, Marc
• Granted Patent: US 7,380,166 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/48
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions

Abstract

An error-handling framework is provided for business process transactions. The error-handling framework facilitates coordination of the invocation of exception and compensation handlers in response to errors. The error-handling framework includes support for custom ordering of compensation actions, data flow into and out of compensation actions, and management of the process state visible to compensation actions.

Claims

1. An error-handling framework for business process transactions, comprising:

an error-handling routine that facilitates fault correction and compensation in response to a fault associated with a business transaction;

a context construct that associates a unit of work with the error-handling routine; and

an execution engine that performs selective compensation of the unit of work upon invocation of the error-handling routine according to a set of predefined rules provided by the error-handling framework, the set of predefined rules defining propagation of error-handling in nested units of work.

2. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the unit of work being one of a transaction and a plurality of transactions.

3. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the error-handling routine comprising an exception handler and a compensation handler, the exception handler determines if a fault occurs and performs fault compensation if the unit of work has not completed, and the exception handler calling the compensation handler to perform compensation if the unit of work has completed.

4. The error-handling framework of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of contexts associated with a plurality of units of work having at least one hierarchical relationship between units of work, and an exception handler and a compensation handler associated with a respective context, the execution engine propagates compensation handler from outer contexts to inner contexts and exception handlers from inner contexts to outer contexts.

5. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the context construct provides support to define custom ordering of compensation handlers.

6. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the execution engine stores a snapshot of the unit of work upon completion of the unit of work, the snapshot containing data used by a compensation handler associated with the unit of work.

7. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the error-handling framework provides at least one of default exception handlers and default compensation handlers for contexts without custom error-handling routines.

8. The error-handling framework of claim 7, the execution engine invoking the at least one of default exception handlers and default compensation handlers for contexts without custom error-handling routines.

9. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the error-handling routine comprising at least one exception handler that detects a fault and calls a compensation handler, the compensation handler calls at least one other compensation handler.

10. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the unit of work comprising an in-line service call, the execution engine executing the unit of work and halting the unit of work during execution of the in-line service an resuming execution of the unit of work upon completion of the in-line call.

11. The error-handling framework of claim 10, the error-handling framework provides default error-handling to the in-line service if custom handling is not provided, the execution engine executing one of custom error-handling and default error-handling associated with the in-line service upon detection of a fault.

12. The error-handling framework of claim 1, the execution engine uses functionality within the error-handling framework to determine success and failure of the unit of work when invoking the error-handling routine.

15. The system of claim 1, the execution engine stores state data associated with the execution of the transaction grouping, the state data optimized is to reflect state data used by the at least one compensation handler associated with transaction grouping.

13. A system for executing a business workflow process, comprising:

a schedule defining a business workflow process, the schedule having a business transaction grouping;

a context associated with the business transaction grouping and an exception handler and at least one compensation handler associated with the context, the exception handler defining the ordering of the at least one compensation handler; and

an execution engine that executes the schedule and invokes the exception handler upon detection of a fault, the exception handler performs fault correction of the business transaction grouping if the business transaction grouping has not completed, and the exception handler calls the compensation handler to perform compensation of the business transaction grouping if the business transaction grouping has completed.

14. The system of claim 13, at least one compensation handler comprising a first compensation handler that passes a plurality of parameters to a second compensation handler.

16. The system of claim 13, further comprising a plurality of transaction groupings having at least one hierarchical relationship, and an exception handler and a compensation handler associated with a respective transaction grouping, the execution engine propagates the execution of the compensation handlers from outer transaction groupings to inner transaction groupings and exception handlers from inner transaction groupings to outer transaction groupings.

17. The system of claim 13, at least one of the exception handler and the at least one compensation handlers being default handlers invoked by the execution engine upon detection of the absence of a custom handler.

18. A method for creating a business workflow schedule, the method comprising:

defining a unit of work of a business workflow process;

associating a context with the unit of work;

creating an exception handler associated with the context; and

creating a compensation handler associated with the context, the compensation handler having at least one passable parameter.

19. The method of claim 18, the unit of work being one of a transaction and a plurality of transactions.

20. The method of claim 18, further comprising defining a plurality of transactions forming the business workflow schedule and associating a context with respective transactions of the plurality of transactions.