Distributed Workflows

Distributed workflows

Assume timeouts, partial failure, duplicate delivery, reordering, and ambiguous outcomes. Define the consistency and ownership boundary before coding.

• Make repeatable operations idempotent with a stable operation/message key and durable deduplication when needed. Do not rely on in-memory flags across instances.
• Before adding application-level retry, account for retries and redelivery already provided by the client or platform. Retry only transient failures when another attempt is actually needed, with bounds, backoff/jitter, cancellation, and dead-letter/escalation behavior. Ensure retried side effects are safe.
• Separate database commit from message publication deliberately; use the repository's outbox/inbox or equivalent pattern when atomic intent matters.
• Define ordering and concurrency per entity/key. Protect against duplicate and concurrent processing.
• In BackgroundService, honor shutdown, avoid async void/unobserved tasks, create scopes for scoped dependencies, and surface terminal failures.
• Attach correlation/trace identifiers and structured outcome metrics without sensitive payloads.

Test duplicate execution, retry exhaustion, cancellation/shutdown, partial failure, and recovery—not just the happy path.