Spring @Transactional read-only propagation

Question

I\'m experimenting with using the command pattern to allow my web layer to work with Hibernate entities within the context of a single transaction (thus avoiding lazy loadin

Answer 1

Calling readOnly=false from readOnly=true doesn't work since the previous transaction continues.

In your example, the handle() method on your service layer is starting a new read-write transaction. If the handle method in turn calls service methods that annotated read-only, the read-only will take no effect as they will participate in the existing read-write transaction instead.

If it is essential for those methods to be read-only, then you can annotate them with Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW, and they will then start a new read-only transaction rather than participate in the existing read-write transaction.

Here is a worked example, CircuitStateRepository is a spring-data JPA repository.

BeanS calls a transactional=read-only Bean1, which does a lookup and calls transactional=read-write Bean2 which saves a new object.

• Bean1 starts a read-only tx.

31 09:39:44.199 [pool-1-thread-1] DEBUG o.s.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager - Creating new transaction with name [nz.co.vodafone.wcim.business.Bean1.startSomething]: PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,ISOLATION_DEFAULT,readOnly; ''

• Bean 2 pariticipates in it.

  31 09:39:44.230 [pool-1-thread-1] DEBUG o.s.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager - Participating in existing transaction

  Nothing is committed to the database.

Now change Bean2 @Transactional annotation to add propagation=Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW

• Bean1 starts a read-only tx.

  31 09:31:36.418 [pool-1-thread-1] DEBUG o.s.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager - Creating new transaction with name [nz.co.vodafone.wcim.business.Bean1.startSomething]: PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,ISOLATION_DEFAULT,readOnly; ''

• Bean2 starts a new read-write tx

  31 09:31:36.449 [pool-1-thread-1] DEBUG o.s.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager - Suspending current transaction, creating new transaction with name [nz.co.vodafone.wcim.business.Bean2.createSomething]

And the changes made by Bean2 are now committed to the database.

Here's the example, tested with spring-data, hibernate and oracle.

@Named
public class BeanS {    
    @Inject
    Bean1 bean1;

    @Scheduled(fixedRate = 20000)
    public void runSomething() {
        bean1.startSomething();
    }
}

@Named
@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class Bean1 {    
    Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Bean1.class);

    @Inject
    private CircuitStateRepository csr;

    @Inject
    private Bean2 bean2;

    public void startSomething() {    
        Iterable s = csr.findAll();
        CircuitState c = s.iterator().next();
        log.info("GOT CIRCUIT {}", c.getCircuitId());
        bean2.createSomething(c.getCircuitId());    
    }
}

@Named
@Transactional(readOnly = false)
public class Bean2 {    
    @Inject
    CircuitStateRepository csr;

    public void createSomething(String circuitId) {
        CircuitState c = new CircuitState(circuitId + "-New-" + new DateTime().toString("hhmmss"), new DateTime());

        csr.save(c);
     }
}