There are various transaction propagations like
REQUIRED - This is the case for DML operation.
SUPPORTS - This is the case for querying database.
MANDATORY - ?
REQUIRES_NEW - ?
NOT_SUPPORTED - ?
NEVER - ?
NESTED - ?
What are some real life scenarios for these transaction propagations? Why these are perfect fit into that situation?
There are various usages and there is no simple answer but I'll try to be the most explainatory
- MANDATORY (expecting transaction): Typically used when you expect that any "higher-context" layer started the transaction and you only want to continue in it. For example if you want one transaction for whole operation from HTTP request to response. Then you start transaction on JAX-RS resource level and lower layers (services) require transaction to run within (otherwise exception is thrown).
- REQUIRES_NEW (always create new transaction): This creates a new transaction and suspends the current one if any exists. From above example, this is the level you set on your JAX-RS resource for example. Or generally if your flow somehow changes and you want to split your logic into multiple transactions (so your code have mutliple logic operations that should be separated).
- REQUIRED (continue in transaction or create if needed): Some kind of mix between MANDATORY and REQUIRES_NEW. In MANDATORY you expect that the transaction exists, for this level you hope that it exists and if not, you create it. Typically used in DAO-like services (from my experience), but it really depends on logic of your app.
- SUPPORTS (caller decides whether to not/run in transaction): Used if want to use the same context as caller (higher context), if your caller was running in transaction, then you run in too. If it didn't, you are also non-transactional. May also be used in DAO-like services if you want higher context to decide.
- NESTED (sub-transaction): I must admit I didn't use this one in real code but generally you create a real sub-transaction that works as some kind of checkpoint. So it runs in the context of "parent" transaction but if it fails it returns to that checkpoint (start of nested transaction). This may be useful when you require this kind of logic in your application, for example if you want to insert large number of items to the database, commiting valid ones and keeping track of invalid ones (so you can catch exception when nested transaction fails but can still commit the whole transaction for valid ones)
- NEVER (expecting there is no transaction): This is the case when you want to be sure that no transaction exists at all. If some code that runs in transaction reaches this code, exception is thrown. So typically this is for cases completely opposite to MANDARTORY. E.g. when you know that no transaction should be affected by this code - very likely because the transaction should not exist.
- NOT_SUPPORTED (continue non-transactionally): This is weaker than NEVER, you want the code to be run non-transactionally. If somehow you enter this code from context where transaction is, you suspend this transaction and continue non-transactionally.
From my experience, you very often want one business action to be atomic. Thus you want only one transaction per request/... For example simple REST call via HTTP that does some DB operations all in one HTTP-like transaction. So my typical usage is REQUIRES_NEW on the top level (JAX-RS Resource) and MANDATORY on all lower level services that are injected to this resource (or even lower).
This may be useful for you. It describes how code behave with given propagation (caller->method)
- REQUIRED: NONE->T1, T1->T1
- REQUIRES_NEW: NONE->T1, T1->T2
- MANDATORY: NONE->Exception, T1->T1
- NOT_SUPPORTED: NONE->NONE, T1->NONE
- SUPPORTS: NONE->NONE, T1->T1
- NEVER: NONE->NONE, T1->Exception