Spring + RMI + transactions + weblogic - spring

Question

We have developed two web services (A,B) with Spring 3, Hibernate 4 & JPA.
Inside a method of service A we need to call to an method of service B. The access is through RMI.
The problem is that the two of them need to be in the same transaction. I think we followed all of the rules dealing with transactions but we cannot rollback the method in service B when service A crashes after method in service B is called.
If an exception is thrown in service A after service B is called the data that service A has changed is rolled back, but not the data changed by service B. It seems that the transaction is renewed in service B and not included in that created in service B.
We use a jndi datasource created in weblogic.
The transactional methods are annotated with:
*#Transactional( readOnly = false, isolation=Isolation.SERIALIZABLE,
rollbackFor=Exception.class, propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED )*
Here is my configuration dealing with transactions:
spring-server.xml (the only data that differs from service to service is the persistence-unit name):
*<bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor" />
<bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="persistenceUnitName" value="SAPOY/SANOT" />
</bean>
<bean id="jtaTransactionManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager">
<property name="allowCustomIsolationLevels" value="true"/>
<property name="globalRollbackOnParticipationFailure" value="true" />
</bean>
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="jtaTransactionManager" proxy-target-class="true" />
<!-- Servicio SAPOY.SANOT -->
<bean id="sanot" class="com.sems.sapoy.sanot.services.impl.Sanot">
<property name="sanotBiz" ref="sanotBiz" />
</bean>*
persistence.xml (the only data that differs from service to service is the persistence-unit name):
*<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd">
<persistence-unit name="SAPOY/SANOT" transaction-type="JTA">
<description>Unidad de Persistencia del modulo SANOT</description>
<provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
<jta-data-source>jdbc/xaDS</jta-data-source>
<properties>
<!--
################################################################
HIBERNATE
################################################################
-->
<property name="hibernate.archive.autodetection" value="class" />
<property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true" />
<property name="hibernate.query.factory_class"
value="org.hibernate.hql.classic.ClassicQueryTranslatorFactory" />
<property name="hibernate.format_sql" value="true" />
<property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect" />
<property name="hibernate.autoReconnect" value="true" />
<property name="hibernate.autoReconnectForPools" value="true" />
<property name="hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class" value="org.hibernate.transaction.WeblogicTransactionManagerLookup" />
<property name="hibernate.transaction.factory_class" value="org.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory" />
<!--
################################################################
CONNECTION
################################################################
-->
<property name="hibernate.connection.autocommit" value="false"/>
<!--
################################################################
CACHE
################################################################
-->
<property name="hibernate.cache.use_second_level_cache" value="true" />
<property name="hibernate.cache.region.factory_class" value="net.sf.ehcache.hibernate.EhCacheRegionFactory" />
<property name="hibernate.cache.use_query_cache" value="true" />
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
</persistence>*

Answer 1

Your DataSource/TransactionManager configurations are just fine, the only problem is that you call your other service through RMI.
The global transactions must be coordinated from the same running Thread that may enlist one or more Resources (JDBC connections/JMS queues), but it cannot span over multiple threads.
The moment you call a RMI method, that call is going to be served by a RMI server which assigns a working thread to service your RMI request. Even if that method is #Transactional the transaction will be defined at the RMI working thread boundary.
Try removing the RMI call and it will work. Implementing it over multiple servers is not a trivial thing to do. You'd probably have to use something like the Command pattern, so that the Service A can call Service B to undo when Service A fails to commit. Like I said, this is not as trivial as a global XA transaction. It requires careful design and it may lead to inconsistencies to due undos happening after other transaction already used the already committed changes.
For that you need WS-Transactions and a Application server to support it. By itself JTA manages global transactions on a Thread basis. To span transactions over multiple Threads you need a higher-level protocol like WS-Transactions.