Question about rollback on payment processing

[Jacopo Cappellato <ti...@sastau.it>]

I think there is an important issue with online payment processors in OFBiz.
I'm not going into the details, because I think it is better to discuss 
this issue in general, but this is something that really happened at 
least with one of my customers.

When an order payment is processed (authorized/captured), in OFbiz a 
chain of events/service calls (ecas etc...) is triggered.
Everything is wrapped inside one transaction so, if something goes 
wrong, the rollback brings everything back to the original situation.
Unfortunately, if the error happens after the online transaction has 
been issued, OFbiz will not know that the payment has been authorized 
and/or captured.

What is in your opinion the best way to handle this scenario?

Jacopo

Re: Question about rollback on payment processing

[Jacopo Cappellato <ti...@sastau.it>]

David,

I really think I'll need (at least) some help to fix this; here are some 
more details.

I don't think that we can fix this by requiring a new transaction.
Let's focus for example the capturing process (but the same issue is 
present in the auth/release/etc... transactions):

a) the main method involved is PaymentGatewayServices.capturePayment(...)
b) this method internally pulls the service name to use to process the 
payment from the store settings and it runs the service requiring a new 
transaction (see line 1413)
c) the above method, "capturePayment", is called by other methods of the 
PaymentGatewayServices class, for example by the captureOrderPayments 
service/method (see line 1147)

The issue is that the captureOrderPayments method, after that the call 
to the capturePayment method is (succesfully) done (i.e. the funds have 
been captured) performs other logics, and for example a few lines below 
it calls another method that could fail and if it happens it returns an 
error causing a rollback (line 1166).
Of course the rollback will not rollback the remote transaction.
The problem is more complex than this, since, even if the 
captureOrderPayments service will return a success, there are other 
services triggered by it that could fail; this would be partially 
addressed requiring a new transaction for the captureOrderPayments 
service though.
Ideally, but I know it is not possible, nothing should happen (that 
could fail) after the transaction has been issued

How can we fix this?

Jacopo


David E. Jones wrote:
> 
> Jacopo,
> 
> Yeah, that's a bit of a scary bug. What should probably happen is that 
> the code that stores information related to the credit card transaction 
> should be separated from everything else. If it is in it's own service 
> already then that service can just have the require-new-transaction 
> attribute set to true. If not, then it should be split out into its own 
> service with that attribute set so that it runs independently (in terms 
> of success/failure) of the other stuff going on.
> 
> This is a pretty big issue... Is something you're looking at working on? 
> If you're short on time and could write up whatever details you've found 
> we can probably get one of our guys on it.
> 
> -David
> 
> 
> On Apr 13, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:
> 
>> I think there is an important issue with online payment processors in 
>> OFBiz.
>> I'm not going into the details, because I think it is better to 
>> discuss this issue in general, but this is something that really 
>> happened at least with one of my customers.
>>
>> When an order payment is processed (authorized/captured), in OFbiz a 
>> chain of events/service calls (ecas etc...) is triggered.
>> Everything is wrapped inside one transaction so, if something goes 
>> wrong, the rollback brings everything back to the original situation.
>> Unfortunately, if the error happens after the online transaction has 
>> been issued, OFbiz will not know that the payment has been authorized 
>> and/or captured.
>>
>> What is in your opinion the best way to handle this scenario?
>>
>> Jacopo
>>
> 

Re: Question about rollback on payment processing

["David E. Jones" <jo...@hotwaxmedia.com>]

Jacopo,

Yeah, that's a bit of a scary bug. What should probably happen is  
that the code that stores information related to the credit card  
transaction should be separated from everything else. If it is in  
it's own service already then that service can just have the require- 
new-transaction attribute set to true. If not, then it should be  
split out into its own service with that attribute set so that it  
runs independently (in terms of success/failure) of the other stuff  
going on.

This is a pretty big issue... Is something you're looking at working  
on? If you're short on time and could write up whatever details  
you've found we can probably get one of our guys on it.

-David


On Apr 13, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Jacopo Cappellato wrote:

> I think there is an important issue with online payment processors  
> in OFBiz.
> I'm not going into the details, because I think it is better to  
> discuss this issue in general, but this is something that really  
> happened at least with one of my customers.
>
> When an order payment is processed (authorized/captured), in OFbiz  
> a chain of events/service calls (ecas etc...) is triggered.
> Everything is wrapped inside one transaction so, if something goes  
> wrong, the rollback brings everything back to the original situation.
> Unfortunately, if the error happens after the online transaction  
> has been issued, OFbiz will not know that the payment has been  
> authorized and/or captured.
>
> What is in your opinion the best way to handle this scenario?
>
> Jacopo
>