spring transactional annotated method without merge call on entities

Question

We are using spring roo, and there are some methods in the codebase annotated with @Transactional.

For example,

class XService {
    @Transactional
    public Response doSomething(String email) {
        User u = User.findByEmail(email);
        u.setLastModified(Calendar.getInstance());
        return new Response("OK");
    }
}

Notice that u.merge() is not called after setLastModified. What should be the value in lastModified column of user table after this method is complete.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Depending on:

1. Method which calls XService.doSomthing is annotated with @Transactional or not, and it ends with a RuntimeException or not.
2. Default Transactional propagation behaviour configuration.

By default, if you call to XService.doSomthing from a controller, the User instance should be updated as u is an attached instance and method doesn't throw a runtime exception.

Look at this post which I think can explain you interesting information about transaction behaviours on JPA.

Good luck.