Transactions
Transaction Characteristics: ACID
What is a transaction?
logical unit of work
Atomic
Transaction must execute completely or not at all (all-or-nothing)
If any step fails, changes performed by other steps must be undone
e.g. online flight reservation
e.g. bank transfer operation
e.g. book order at amazon.com
Consistent
Data must remain consistent (existing foreign keys, multiplicities, etc.)
Invariants may be violated during a transaction
Responsibility of programmer!
complex
involves manipulation of a lot of data (e.g. on different DBs)
Isolated
The data that a transaction accesses cannot be affected by any other part
of the system until the transaction is completed
Durable
All changes made in a transaction must be written to physical storage
Changes must not be lost if the system crashes
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Transaction Participants
Transaction Management
Transactional application
An application that uses transactions
May consist of Servlets, JSPs, EJBs
Manual transaction management
application is responsible for
starting transaction
committing or rolling back the transaction
suspending and resuming transactions
Resource manager
disadvantages
Provides and enforces the ACID transaction properties
Examples:
complex code
components difficult to reuse
relational data bases
JMS provider
EIS systems (=> Connector API)
EJB transaction management
advantages
Transaction demarcation
support of distributed transactions
no complex error code
begin
commit or rollback
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EJB Transaction Management
Transactional Properties
Container Managed
All work of the EJB component must occur within a transaction
The container shall begin a transaction if none is passed to this component
Transaction attributes are defined in the deployment descriptor
for each EJB method (home & remote)
EJB container is responsible to start / suspend transactions
EJB container handles the commit / rollback automatically
Session-, Message-Ddriven and Entity-Beans can use
container managed transactions
Required
RequiresNew
This EJB component must be the root of a transaction
If there is a pending transaction the container shall suspend it
Supports
NotSupported
This bean may or may not execute within a transaction
All work of the EJB instance is made outside of a transaction
Any inherited transaction is suspended
Bean Managed
the bean developer directly does the commit/rollback work
only session beans and message driven beans can be bean managed
Mandatory
Never
This EJB instance must run within a clients transactional context
This EJB instance must never run within a clients transactional context
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Transactional Properties
Client's
Transaction
Business Method's
Transaction
Required
None
T1
None
T1
None
T1
None
T1
None
T1
None
T1
T2
T1
T2
T2
ERROR
T1
None
None
None
T1
None
ERROR
Mandatory
NotSupported
Supports
Never
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Transactional Properties
Transaction
Attribute
RequiresNew
15 May 2003
Required
RequiresNew
Usually used for beans which update databases
Used if a database update must be performed independent of the
success of a client transaction
Example: StatisticBean / LoggingBean
Supports
Methods without (or with an atomic) update operation, dont-care
No overhead => efficient, but it can lead to unpredictable results
NotSupported
Hint for the client that rollback is not supported
Example: Access to a service via HTTP
Mandatory
Never
Stronger version of Required (helps to detect assembly errors)
Stronger version of NotSupported (helps to detect assembly errors)
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Transactional Properties
Transactional Properties: Restrictions
<container-transaction>
<method>
<ejb-name>AccountEJB</ejb-name>
<method-intf>Home</method-intf>
<method-name>*</method-name>
</method>
<trans-attribute>Required</trans-attribute>
</container-transaction>
attributes can only be defined on business methods (in remote/local
interface)
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Entity Beans
attributes can be defined for business methods (in remote/local interface)
and create-, findXXX-, remove-methods (in home interfaces)
<container-transaction>
<method> <ejb-name>AccountEJB</ejb-name>
<method-name>deposit</method-name>
</method>
<method> <ejb-name>AccountEJB</ejb-name>
<method-name>withdraw</method-name>
</method>
<trans-attribute>Required</trans-attribute>
</container-transaction>
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Session Beans
EJB 2.0 CMP
only use Required, RequiresNew and Mandatory
(support for Never, Supports, NotSupported is optional)
MDB (Message Driven Beans)
only applicable for the onMessage method
only Required and NotSupported can be used
(other modes depend on transaction context of the client)
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Rolling Back a CM-Transaction
Transactions and EntityBeans
Explicit
EJBContext ctx = ;
ctx.setRollbackOnly()
Automatic
if a system exception is thrown, the container will roll-back the
transaction
if an application exception is thrown, the roll-back is not automatic
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Roll Back
Requires / Mandatory / RequiresNew
the container will call ejbLoad automatically before each transacted
method
the container will call ejbStore automatically after a successful
modification
system exceptions are extensions of RuntimeException
example application exceptions:
CreateException
FinderException
RemoveException
user-defined checked Exceptions
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if a transaction is rolled back, then the changes made with SQL
statements are not committed
instance variables (cached values) are not restored
causes the container to automatically roll back the transaction
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EJB 2.0: Commit Options
EJB 2.0: Commit Options [JBoss]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss>
<enterprise-beans>
<entity>
<ejb-name>AccountEJB</ejb-name>
<configuration-name>
Commit B BMP EntityBean
</configuration-name>
</entity>
</enterprise-beans>
<container-configurations>
<container-configuration extends="Standard BMP EntityBean">
<container-name>Commit B BMP EntityBean</container-name>
<commit-option>B</commit-option>
</container-configuration>
</container-configurations>
</jboss>
Container can select from the following commit options:
Option A: Container caches "ready" Entity-instances
Exclusive data source access is necessary
Synchronization not necessary before each access
Option B: Container caches "ready" Entity-instances, but no exclusive
access to data source
Synchronization necessary at the beginning of a transaction
Option C: No caching
The container returns Entity-instance to the pool after transaction end
Option D [JBoss]: Similar to Option A, but with a regular automatic
refresh
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EJB 2.0: Commit Options [JBoss]
Container Configuration
Standard CMP 2.x EntityBean
Standard CMP EntityBean
Standard BMP EntityBean
Clustered CMP 2.x EntityBean
Clustered CMP EntityBean
Clustered BMP EntityBean
Instance Per Transaction CMP EntityBean
Instance Per Transaction BMP EntityBean
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Transactions and Session Beans
Default
B
A
A
B
B
B
B
B
Roll Back
changed instance variables in a (stateful) session bean are not restored
upon transaction roll back !!!
no ejbLoad / ejbStore for session beans
javax.ejb.SessionSynchronization interface
void afterBegin()
transaction just started
void beforeCompletion()
last chance for a roll back
void afterCompletion(boolean committed)
parameter informs whether transaction was committed or rolled back
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Bean-Managed Transactions
CMT Remarks
JDBC Transactions
try {
con.setAutoCommit(false); ... ; con.commit();
}
catch(Exception e){
try {con.rollback(); throw new EJBException(e);}
catch(SQLException se){throw new EJBException(se);}
}
do not call set/getRollbackOnly of EJBContext in bean-managed
transactions
Web Components can control transactions
No nested transactions
access via JNDI (java:comp/UserTransaction)
begin must not be called when a transaction is active
transaction state can be accessed with getStatus
no UserTransactions in a CMT Bean
JTA Transactions
UserTransaction ut = context.getUserTransaction();
try {
// ^^^ = bean context !
ut.begin(); ... ; ut.commit();
}
catch(Exception e){
try{ut.rollback(); throw new EJBException(e);}
catch(SystemException se){throw new EJBException(se);}
}
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setRollbackOnly
commit
commit must eventually be called
roll back is performed automatically after a time out
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