The WSBA spec requires a coordinator to drop completed requests from a web service belonging to an unknown transaction. The idea is that the web service eventually gets bored and sends a getstatus message to see if the transacton is still valid at which point the coordinator dispatches an invalid state fault initiating compensation at the web service end. The problem is that timeing out the resending of completed and switching to sending getstatus is a tricky business. Done too early it can cause ping-ponging back and forth from completed to getstatus. Too late and it means it takes a long time before compensation is done.

It is not clear from the spec that completed cannot also legitimately send an invalid state fault when it sees completed from an unknown participant. If so then doing this would significantly speed up recovery. This needs investigating to check that it will not cause interop problems and, if it is permissible, should be implemented.