Does Spring @transaction work on a concrete method of abstract class

Question

From spring reference doc

Spring recommends that you only annotate concrete classes (and methods of concrete classes) with the @Transactional annotation, as opposed to annotating interfaces. You certainly can place the @Transactional annotation on an interface (or an interface method), but this works only as you would expect it to if you are using interface-based proxies. The fact that Java annotations are not inherited from interfaces means that if you are using class-based proxies (proxy-target-class="true") or the weaving-based aspect (mode="aspectj"), then the transaction settings are not recognized by the proxying and weaving infrastructure, and the object will not be wrapped in a transactional proxy, which would be decidedly bad.

Though it only talks about interfaces, abstract classes are considered as non-concrete as well.

So if i have an abstract class

public abstract class BaseService{
//here is a concrete method
@Transactional
public void updateData{
//do stuff using dao layer
}

and a concrete class which extends the class

public class SpecialService extends BaseService{
//body of class
}

Now if i call specialService.updateData() from my controller class will it be transactional?

Answer 1

Granting that you have actually configured Spring transaction management correctly, using @Transactional on an abstract superclass will work, since @Transactional is itself annotated with @Inherited and from it's Javadoc we have:

Indicates that an annotation type is automatically inherited. If an Inherited meta-annotation is present on an annotation type declaration, and the user queries the annotation type on a class declaration, and the class declaration has no annotation for this type, then the class's superclass will automatically be queried for the annotation type. This process will be repeated until an annotation for this type is found, or the top of the class hierarchy (Object) is reached. If no superclass has an annotation for this type, then the query will indicate that the class in question has no such annotation.

Note that this meta-annotation type has no effect if the annotated type is used to annotate anything other than a class. Note also that this meta-annotation only causes annotations to be inherited from superclasses; annotations on implemented interfaces have no effect.

To actually see that @Transactional is annotated with @Inherited check out it's Javadoc