Using Spring Transactions in MyBatis API - spring

Question

We have developed a data persistence framework using Mybatis. The framework uses plain MyBatis APIs. (We were prohibited from using any mybatis-spring, do not ask… why?)
Now we have to integrate this persistence framework with another framework developed by other teams. This other framework heavily uses spring transactions for everything. Our persistent framework DAOs will be used by this framework within its own API ….that means the spring managed transactions will be propagated to MyBatis DAO. It is expected that our MyBatis based persistence framework should participate in spring managed transactions without any issues.
There are two options for us to make this work
(1)Change our persistent framework to use mybatis-spring module. Change DAOs to use mappers directly injected using spring and spring’s SqlSessionFactoryBean. I did build a small example simulating both the frameworks and everything works without any issue. The problem is with this approach that it requires changing almost all the DAOs to use spring injected mapper, extensively test the framework again. We simply do not have time available due to delivery timeline.
(2)Use mybatis-spring, define SqlSeeionFactory using spring – set the datasource and transaction manager used by other framework. Something like
<bean id="smpDataSource" class="oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="connectionCachingEnabled" value="true" />
<property name="URL"> <value>${db.thin.url}</value></property>
<property name="user"> <value>${db.user}</value></property>
<property name="password"><value>${db.password}</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="dbTransactionManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<property name="dataSource" ref="smpDataSource" />
</bean>
<bean id="sqlSessionFactory" class="org.mybatis.spring.SqlSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="smpDataSource" />
<property name="typeAliasesPackage" value="spike.smp51.domain" />
<property name="mapperLocations" value="classpath*:spike/smp51/mappers/*.xml" </bean>
Then in applicataion code MyBatis DAO gets the sqlseesionfactory from spring like
public static SqlSessionFactory getSqlSessionFactory() throws Exception
{
DefaultSqlSessionFactory sessionFactory = (DefaultSqlSessionFactory)ctx.getBean("sqlSessionFactory");
return sessionFactory;
}
All DAOs already use SqlSeesionFactory to open and close sessions. Just replace that mybatis created sqlseeionfactory with spring created sqlseeionfactory. That way we will have only few lines of changes.
This approach is outlined here
http://mybatis.github.io/spring/using-api.html
The mybatis documentation warns about this approach – specifically that it will not participate in spring transactions.
When I tried the 2nd approach, our framework was able to participate in spring transactions. This is strange. Is the MyBatis documentation incorrect then? I did verify it extensively by creating various transaction boundaries using spring transactions + AOP . MyBatis DAOs are able to participate in spring managed transactions every time. Since this second approach will save us 90% of the development time – we really like to use it – but worried since MyBatis warns following this approach. Has anyone tried this approach? Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Did you have any return on that ?
I'm wondering if in the doc they're talking about org.apache.ibatis.session.SqlSessionFactory from Mybatis-api while the SqlSessionFactory you're using is from the mybatis-spring lib : org.mybatis.spring.SqlSessionFactoryBean