BizTalk Server 2006: The Compensation Model

The week before last, I spent some time updating an existing document on BizTalk exception handling for a client.   I added a couple of pages on the use of compensation.   I hoped to be able to reference a comprehensive article or paper on the subject, but after spending some time searching,  I largely drew blanks.   As always, the Microsoft documentation proved fragmented, terse and incomplete, although it has certainly improved since BizTalk 2004 days.   The small (but growing) number of BizTalk books did little better.    A few blog articles describe the compensation model to some degree.  There are a handful of academic papers which discuss the model, which is essentially the same model defined by BPEL4WS.   However, these papers are not aimed at BizTalk developers, and are not BizTalk Server-specific.  

To address this, I spent some time putting together an article which, I hope, will serve to introduce the subject of compensation in a reasonably comprehensive fashion.   You can read it here.

http://geekswithblogs.net/cyoung/articles/100424.aspx