Why Grails/Spring transactional behavior not working in this case? - spring

Question

I have a grails (2.5.2) app, with a mysql and a NoSQL interaction. There's a main/principal service method that call 2 other methods:
class mainService {
static transactional = false
NoSQLDataAccessService noSQLDataAccessService
// main/principal method
#Transactional
void save(json){
// (1) creating domain entities from json
addNewDomainEntities(entities)
// (2)
noSQLDataAccessService.set(json)
}
#Transactional
void addNewDomainEntities(entities){
// save the entities in a mysql schema and use save(flush:true)
// because i need the generated id's
}
}
As you can see, this mainService creates new domain entities (1), flushing the session to get the id's. Then, i call other service method (2) that store the json in a NoSQL schema:
class NoSQLDataAccessService(){
static transactional = false
void set(json){
try{
// save the json in a NoSQL schema
} catch(Exception ex){
// if fails, i log the exception and throws it again
throws ex
}
}
}
But, sometimes the noSQLDataAccessService.set() fails by external causes and the entities created before still persist in the mysql db.(this is the problem)
The save method, that contains all this program execution, is marked like #Transactional, so if the noSQLDataAccessService.set() throws an exception, all the changes made should be not applied because the rollback. I'm right?

Answer 1

You probably have to throw an RuntimeException, not an Exception, to force a rollback as per this StackOverflow conversation. Instead of:
throws ex
you might try:
throw new RuntimeException(ex)
Further, I would recommend you be explicit about your transaction isolation. Perhaps something like:
#Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED, isolation = Isolation.SERIALIZABLE)