Persist entity in ApplicationLifecycleListener

Question

hi,
i would like to persist some entities at deployment time in a postStart method of a class which extends ApplicationLifecycleListener.
the problem is that the entites are not in the db although i dont get any exceptions and the entities even get their id after persist.
it looks like the transaction is not committed. i tried to commit manually but i got an exception that i cannot do this with a JTA entity manager.
is there a way to 'force' the commit?
or how could i use application managed entity manager? i tried to jndi lookup, but did not succeed:( i found only my datasource which is an instance of RmiDataSource.
thanks a lot for the help,
cheers,
gg

Answer 1

Database access inside events is allowed, whether JPA events or descriptor events, but you need to be careful. Basically you need to understand what you are doing and its affects and are on your own if you screw something up. You must keep in mind that the persistence context is in the process of a commit. So calling persist() or changing objects can have issues, the objects may not get inserted or changes applied depending on the event. Performing direct database access such as native SQL queries is probably safer, but you need to be careful of locks and violating database constraints. You can use insertObject within a UnitOfWork during write events, but you need to be careful.
Normally you would use the same transaction, if you created a new transaction/EntityManager/UnitOfWork, then you need to be careful or performance, and of deadlocking with yourself.