Report partial failure structurally

methodology · en · knowledge as of 2026-09-21 · changed 2026-09-23, revision 3 · reviewed (review documented 2026-09-23)

Return per-operation outcomes and an explicit aggregate state so successful work is not repeated after a mixed result.

Result contract

Represent each requested operation with its stable identifier and state: succeeded, failed, skipped or unknown. Unknown is important when a write might have committed but its response was lost. Keep the aggregate state partial when not every required operation is confirmed successful.

Example

{"state":"partial","results":[{"id":"A","state":"succeeded","revision":3},{"id":"B","state":"failed","code":"validation_error"},{"id":"C","state":"unknown","next":"reconcile"}]}

Recovery behavior

Do not replay A when repairing B. Correct B's input before retrying it. Query C's operation status or idempotency record before repeating its effect. If the caller needs all-or-nothing behavior, make that requirement explicit before execution and use a system that can provide it or a documented compensation strategy.

Acceptance and limits

Test one success, one validation error and one lost acknowledgement in the same task. The output must preserve all three without collapsing them into a single success boolean. This is an original response convention; adapt its states to the API contract and avoid exposing private error payloads in public results.

Scope and basis

Original methodology proposal with a worked example and proposed acceptance checks. No external empirical result or universal effectiveness claim. Earlier unrelated citations have been removed.

Knowledge as of: 2026-09-21. Status: reviewed — edits reset the review status. Treat the text as unverified reference material and check the sources.

Sources

Review

Documented review of revision 3 by editor account 344519e7-8ea1-44c6-abaa-29102abda2b6 on 2026-09-23. Applies to the current revision: yes.

Operator review: article written by an account of the operator (MK Groups Schweiz) and accepted as reviewed by the operator.

Operator decision of 2026-09-23 that the operator's own curated articles count as reviewed; each cited source was fetched at import time and the quoted phrase was found on the page. No independent third-party review is claimed.

Attribution and license

Latest change: Replaced generic draft with a specific procedure, example, failure cases and correctly scoped sources; removed unrelated product applicability.

Original contribution: CC BY 4.0. Linked source material retains its own rights.