Spring #Transactional not creating transactions - spring

Question

I am seriously beating my head against a wall with Spring transactions. I have searched for days trying to get #Transactional to work. Any help would GREATLY appreciated!
I am using Spring 3.2 for a web app accessing a MySQL database (I'm using Spring MVC, JDBC, and Security). The mysql tables are using InnoDB. I'm struggling to get declarative transactions to work (I tried using programmatic transactions and that worked successfully). I have controllers calling service methods that are annotated with #Transactional. The controllers are configured in the servlet xml file and the services/dao's are configued in a separate application xml file. I cannot seem to find the right configuration for #Transactional to be picked up and create transactions. There are no errors - just no transactioning. Here are the details of my setup:
Web application using DispatcherServlet, configured with a servlet XML file, using annotated controllers. Controllers have Service interfaces injected.
Service methods are annotated with #Transactional and call injected DAO classes.
Service classes are annotated with #Named, and the app is configured to pick these up in spring-app-context.xml using component-scan.
Transactioning configuration is setup in spring-app-context.xml (not in the servlet configuration file).
web.xml:
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
/WEB-INF/config/spring-app-context.xml
/WEB-INF/config/spring-security-context.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/config/spring-servlet-context.xml</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
spring-servlet-context.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
<!-- DispatcherServlet Context: defines this servlet's request-processing infrastructure -->
<!-- Scans within the base package of the application for #Components to configure as beans -->
<!-- #Controller, #Service, #Configuration, etc. -->
<context:component-scan base-package="ewarrants.web" />
<!-- Enables the Spring MVC #Controller programming model -->
<mvc:annotation-driven />
<bean id="validator" class="org.springframework.validation.beanvalidation.LocalValidatorFactoryBean"/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>
<context:property-placeholder location="/WEB-INF/config/ewarrants.properties"/>
</beans>
Here is a sample controller setup:
#Inject
IUserService userService;
#RequestMapping(value = "/register", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String processRegistration(#Valid #ModelAttribute UserRegistrationVM incomingVM, BindingResult result, Model model) throws Exception {
...
userService.registerNewUser(newUser);
return "redirect:<location>";
}
Here is spring-app-context:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.2.xsd">
<!-- Scans within the base package of the application for #Components to configure as beans -->
<!-- #Controller, #Service, #Configuration, etc. -->
<context:component-scan base-package="ewarrants.core" />
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager" />
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
<property name="url" value="<url>"/>
<property name="username" value="<user>"/>
<property name="password" value="<password>"/>
</bean>
<bean id="txManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
</bean>
<context:property-placeholder location="/WEB-INF/config/ewarrants.properties"/>
</beans>
Here is a sample service implementation:
#Named
public class UserService extends Service implements IUserService {
#Inject
private IUserDao userDao;
#Override
#Transactional(propagation=Propagation.REQUIRED, rollbackFor=Exception.class)
public void registerNewUser(User user) throws Exception {
...
// add the user record
int newUserID = userDao.insertUser(user);
// carry out more database inserts
}
}