JMS Distributed Transactions

Question

I need to perform a distributed transaction in My Servlet.
My distributed transaction involves Updating to the DB and also publishing a message to a queue.
The queue is not present in my app server, where my Servlet is running.
It is there on a remote machine.
I'm using below code to achieve the same.
But I'm not getting the transactional behaviour working... That means
If I publish a message to queue and then if DB Operation fails, the transaction should roll back and the queue should not be having any contents.
But my queue is still showing me the contents...
Any glitches in my code???
public class RemoteServlet extends javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet implements
          javax.servlet.Servlet {
     private QueueConnectionFactory queueConnectionFactory;
     private Queue queue;     
     private QueueConnection queueConnection = null;
     private QueueSession queueSession = null;
     private QueueSender queueSender = null;
     private TextMessage message = null;
     @Resource
     UserTransaction utx;
     protected void doBatch(HttpServletRequest request,
               HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
          try {
               initQueue();          
               utx.begin();
               publishMessage(false);
               updateDB();//Some DB Operation which will fail to test the rollback          
               utx.commit();
          } catch (Exception e) {
               utx.rollback();
               e.printStackTrace();
          } finally {
               closeJMS();
          printQueue();
     private void closeJMS() {
          try {
               queueSession.close();
               queueConnection.close();
          } catch (JMSException jmse) {
               jmse.printStackTrace();
     private void publishMessage() throws Exception {
        for ( int i = 1; i < 5; i++) {
             message = queueSession.createTextMessage();
              message.setText("Current Time is (" + (new Date().getTime() + i) + ")::  " + new Date());
              System.out.println("<br>" + "Sending message :: " + message.getText());
              queueSender.send(message);
     public void initQueue() throws Exception {
          Context ctx = getInitialContext();
          Object obj = null;
          try {
               queueConnectionFactory = (QueueConnectionFactory) ctx.lookup("jmsfactory/default/MyQueueConnectionFactoryXA");
               queue = (Queue) ctx.lookup("jmsqueues/default/MyQueue");
               queueConnection = queueConnectionFactory.createQueueConnection();
               queueSession = queueConnection.createQueueSession(true, Session.AUTO_ACKNOWLEDGE);
               queueSender = queueSession.createSender(queue);
               queueConnection.start();
          } catch (Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     public void printQueue(String desc) {
          try {
               QueueBrowser browser = queueSession.createBrowser(queue);
               Enumeration<TextMessage> en = browser.getEnumeration();
               while (en.hasMoreElements()) {
                 TextMessage queueBrMessage = en.nextElement();
                 System.out .println( "<br>" + queueBrMessage.getText());
          } catch (JMSException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
     public Context getInitialContext() throws Exception {
          Properties properties = new Properties();
          properties.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "com.sap.engine.services.jndi.InitialContextFactoryImpl");
          properties.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "10.134.162.75:50004"); // IP Address of the Host where the Queue is setup
          properties.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "Administrator");
          properties.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "password");
          properties.put("force_remote", "true");
          InitialContext context = new InitialContext(properties);
          return context;
     public RemoteServlet() {
          super();
     protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
               HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
          try {
               doBatch(request, response);
          } catch (Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();

Answer 1

A "resource adapter" is a JavaEE component used by modern application servers for linking to an external resource such as a JMS provider or database. It will wrap the XAQueueConnection for you and take care of enlisting the resources, performing two-phase commit, etc. - basically hiding all the complexities of XA transactions from you.
Nigel