Prevent post-restore background jobs from repeating completed side effects
A restored outbox contains delivery records whose external effects happened after the database backup but before the outage.
- Focused work estimate
- 6h + prerequisites
- Priority in the scenario
- High
- Engineering practice
- Distributed recovery · Idempotency
Estimated field mix
- Distributed systems50%
- Database engineering30%
- Site reliability20%
Field percentages are editorial estimates of the ticket's engineering focus. They total 100%; they are not measured time, proficiency scores, or ownership evidence.
Review it, then add it to your workspace.
The board opens an editable draft; nothing is saved until you confirm it. Sign-in and workspace permissions apply, and Demo boards remain ephemeral.
Project context
A fictional case-management team has nightly backup files but has never tested application behavior after restore. Missing roles and external artifact references may make a successful database restore unusable.
Setup prerequisites
- Create a disposable synthetic database and local backup directory.
- Never connect these drills to production or overwrite a shared database.
Preceding work
Complete these dependencies, or supply their agreed outputs before taking this ticket.
- ARESTORE-101 · Inventory database recovery inputs beyond the dump file
- ARESTORE-102 · Create a backup manifest that binds bytes to schema revision
- ARESTORE-103 · Validate that a restore target is isolated before running destructive steps
- ARESTORE-104 · Restore a verified backup into a new database generation
- ARESTORE-105 · Check relational invariants after restoration
- ARESTORE-106 · Reconcile restored database references with external artifacts
Acceptance criteria
- Document the database/external-side-effect recovery gap.
- Reconcile provider identities before redispatching restored records.
- Preserve unknown outcomes rather than asserting they were never sent.
Implementation constraints
- Use fake providers with durable synthetic request identities; send no messages.
Verification to include
- Restore a completed external operation and reconcile it without duplication.
- Make provider status unavailable and keep redispatch blocked under the declared policy.
Deliverables
- Outbox recovery protocol and provider probe
Rollout and recovery
Start restored workers paused; release only reconciled work and retain unknown cases.
Value of the work
For the engineer: Practice restore verification, provenance and operational recovery.
For the team: Review evidence that recovery produces coherent usable state under declared limits.
Evidence boundaries
Outcome Evidence: Tests, patches, and runbooks are requested deliverables. They become Outcome Evidence only through a qualified Mission and immutable Evidence IDs.
Ownership Evidence: Independent adaptation must be observed under a declared verification policy and cite immutable Evidence IDs. Completing a planning ticket establishes no Ownership Evidence.