Spring vs. Jakarta EE: Transaction Propagation

Overview of transaction propagation strategies in Spring and Jakarta EE.

Both Spring and Jakarta EE allow for convenient, annotation-based transaction demarcation with the following annotations:

• Spring: @Transactional
• Jakarta EE: @Transactional, or @Stateless with EJBs

By using values of the Spring enum Propagation, or the Jakarta EE enums Transactional.TxType / TransactionAttributeType (EJB), the following aspects regarding transaction propagation can be configured:

What shall happen if there already is a running transaction?

1. Continue using the existing transaction, and don't create a new one (REQUIRED, SUPPORTS, MANDATORY).
2. Suspend the existing transaction, and
   1. create a new, inner transaction (REQUIRES_NEW).
   2. don't create a new transaction (NOT_SUPPORTED).
3. Create a savepoint for the existing transaction, and create a nested transaction (NESTED).
4. Throw an exception (NEVER).

An “inner” transaction differs from a “nested” transaction in the following way: Inner transactions are completely independent from the outer transaction. As soon as the inner transaction finishes successfully, it is committed to the database. In contrast, nested transactions are part of the outer transaction, and are committed at the end of the outer transaction. If the outer transaction fails, the nested transaction fails as well. Nested transactions are not supported by all transaction managers.

What shall happen if there is no running transaction?

1. Create a new one (REQUIRED, REQUIRES_NEW, NESTED).
2. Don't create a new one (SUPPORTS, NOT_SUPPORTED, NEVER).
3. Throw an exception (MANDATORY)

Overview table

Spring	Jakarta EE	existing TX	no existing TX
REQUIRED	REQUIRED	use	create
SUPPORTS	SUPPORTS	use	don’t create
MANDATORY	MANDATORY	use	exception
REQUIRES_NEW	REQUIRES_NEW	suspend & create	create
NOT_SUPPORTED	NOT_SUPPORTED	suspend	don’t create
NESTED	-	savepoint & inner TX	create
NEVER	NEVER	exception	don’t create