The annotation Propagation.NEVER doesn't work

Question

Programmers! I don't understand how doeas the propagation attribute work in the @Transactional annotation. Please, help)

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
        <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.springapp.mvc"></property>
        <property name="hibernateProperties">
            <props>
                <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.jdbc.batch_size">10</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.max_fetch_depth">3</prop>
                <prop key="jdbc.fetch_size">50</prop>
                <prop key="hbm2ddl.auto">create-drop</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
        <property name = "dataSource" ref = "dataSource"></property>
    </bean>

Service class:

   @Service
   public class BookManager implements IBookManager {

      @Autowired
      private  SessionFactory  sessionFactory;

      @Override
      @Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW)
      public void method1() {
          Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();
          Book book = (Book) session.load(Book.class, 1);
          System.out.println("first: " + book.getTitle());
         method2();
      }

      @Override
      @Transactional(propagation = Propagation.NEVER)
      public void method2() {
            System.out.println("hello");
     }
 }

I expect that the method method2() throws an exception, as it is annotated with Propagation.NEVER. But this is not happening.

Output

 июн 27, 2015 3:35:35 PM org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect <init>
 INFO: HHH000400: Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect
 июн 27, 2015 3:35:35 PM  org.hibernate.engine.jdbc.internal.LobCreatorBuilder useContextualLobCreation
 INFO: HHH000424: Disabling contextual LOB creation as createClob() method threw error : java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 июн 27, 2015 3:35:36 PM org.hibernate.engine.transaction.internal.TransactionFactoryInitiator initiateService
 INFO: HHH000399: Using default transaction strategy (direct JDBC transactions)
 июн 27, 2015 3:35:36 PM org.hibernate.hql.internal.ast.ASTQueryTranslatorFactory <init>
 INFO: HHH000397: Using ASTQueryTranslatorFactory
 июн 27, 2015 3:35:36 PM org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager           afterPropertiesSet
 INFO: Using DataSource [org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource@6c5945a7] of Hibernate SessionFactory for HibernateTransactionManager
 Hibernate: select book0_.id as id1_0_0_, book0_.title as title2_0_0_ from books book0_ where book0_.id=?
 first: 33
 hello

 Process finished with exit code 0

Why it doesn't work?

Thanks :)

Answer 1

Transactions in Spring are proxy-based: when a bean A calls a transactional bean B, it actually calls a method of a dynamic proxy, which deals with the opening of the transaction, then delegates to the actual bean B, then deals with the commit/rollback of the transaction.

If you call a method2 from a method1 of a single bean A, your call is not intercepted by the transactional proxy anymore, and Spring is thus completely unaware that method2() has been called. So nothing can check that there is no transaction.

Put the method2 in another bean, injected in BookManager, and everything will work as expected.