Glossary · System coordination, integration and orchestration
Compensating action
Also known as: Compensating transaction, Compensation (saga)
German: Ausgleichsaktion
A compensating action is a new, deliberate action that offsets the business effect of an earlier action that can’t simply be rolled back — such as a cancellation, a reversal entry, a correction notice or a recall — performed and recorded as its own step rather than by erasing the original.
- System integration
In one sentence
A compensating action offsets an earlier action that can’t be rolled back — a cancellation, reversal entry or correction — recorded as its own step.
Example
An agent booked 200 duplicate goods receipts; instead of deleting them, the team posts 200 reversal entries so the inventory is correct and the history shows what happened.
Explained in context
This term is a station of a mini course
- When an AI agent crosses the line: detect, contain and restore operationsStation: Release before return to service · ERP, CRM and ticketingStart the course
Context cards connect this term with others to answer one question. Also in British English and German.
- Restoring operations after an AI agent incidentWhat can be undone after an AI agent crossed its boundary, what can’t — and when may the agent and the systems it touched run again?UKDeutsch
- When an AI agent crosses the line: detect, contain and restore operationsWhat has to be in place when an AI agent does something it isn’t allowed to do — in IT systems, IoT fleets, OT and on machines — and how is it detected, stopped and released again?UKDeutsch
How it applies
- From the saga pattern: In a saga, each step of a long-running process has a compensating step that undoes its business effect when a later step fails. The same idea serves restoration after an agent incident.
- History stays: Compensation adds records instead of erasing them, which keeps the audit trail and the evidence for reports intact.
- Designed in advance: For every irreversible action an agent may take, name the compensating action and who may trigger it.
- Not always possible: Some effects — a safety-relevant message read by thousands, material processed on a machine — can only be followed by a correction or a repair.