Spring #Transaction not rolling back - spring

Question

I have a very strange problem and looking for the solution here. I spent significant amount of time by reading articles and other questions on SO however no luck.
I am using #Transactional annotation in my sample application of Spring 3 and hibernate 3 as shown below. In the last line of method I am explicitly throwing NullPointerException as shown below.
package com.mkyong.common;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;
import com.mkyong.stock.bo.StockBo;
import com.mkyong.stock.model.Stock;
#Service("stockService")
public class StockServiceImpl {
final static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(StockServiceImpl.class);
#Transactional(rollbackFor ={ NullPointerException.class} )
public void createNewStock(StockBo stockBo) {
/** insert **/
Stock stock = new Stock();
String code = "xee";
stock.setStockCode(code);
stock.setStockName(code);
stockBo.save(stock);
logger.debug("#################### After Save ##########################");
throw new NullPointerException();
}
}
However this transaction is not rolling back and always commiting to database even though NullPointerException is thrown.
Below is my application context file
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
">
<!-- Database Configuration -->
<import resource="../database/DataSource.xml" />
<import resource="../database/Hibernate.xml" />
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>
<!-- Auto scan the components -->
<context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong.stock" />
<bean
class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager"
id="transactionManager">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"></property>
</bean>
</beans>

Answer 1

Judging from your configuration you are using Hibernate, however you are using the transaction manager that is solely for plain JDBC usage.
To have proper transaction management you must use the PlatformTransactionManager which belongs to your persistence technology. In your case you should use the HibernateTransactionManager instead of the DataSourceTransactionManager.
<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.hibernate5.HibernateTransactionManager>
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
Note: This is for Hibernate5 (see the package name) use the one that fits your version of hibernate.

Answer 2

Make sure that the class that contains the method is in the application context not in the web application context (simple: the parent class of the method should be a service, repository etc. not a controller).
Also check that you import the #Transactional annotation from the right spring package.

Answer 3

Using only #Transactional annotation is enough. You dont require rollbackFor attribute to rollback on NullPointerException. Transactions with #Transactional annotation are defaulted to RuntimeException.
You should add rollbackFor only if you want to rollback on Checked Exceptions.