I just saw an interesting post at Dr. Dobbs about the SOA Reservation Pattern at http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=SOA-Patterns—Reservation.html&Itemid=29.

The basic idea is that there is a problem with the Compensating Transactions pattern (presented in the LZA Boot Camp course). Sometimes Compensations fail, leading to Very Bad Things. Instead, a two-phase approach should be taken whereby a service reserves the resources it needs, then confirms that reservation at a later time (though not too much later).