Problem with transacted JMS connection factory and transaction timeouts

Question

          We encountered an interesting problem using transacted JMS connection factories.
          An EJB starts a container managed transaction and tries to validate a credit card
          before creating some information to a database for the user, in case of success
          an SMS is sent to the user via the transacted JMS queue. If the credit card authentications
          duration is about the same as the transactions timeout (in this case the default
          30 seconds) sometimes the database inserts is committed but the JMS insert is
          rollbacked. How can this be?
          If the authorization duration is much longer than 30 seconds everything works
          fine (both database and JMS inserts rollbacked), the same is true if a rollback
          is insured by calling EJBContext.setRollbackOnly(). The problem thus occurs only
          if the duration is approximately the same as the transaction timeout, it appears
          that the database insert is not timeouted but the JMS insert is. How can this
          be if they are both participating in the same transaction.
          The JMSConnectionFactory used is a Connection factory with XA-enabled. The result
          is the same also with the default "javax.jms.QueueConnectionFactory" and if we
          configure our own factory with user transactions enabled.
          Any help appreciated!
          

Answer 1

Tomas Granö wrote:
          > We encountered an interesting problem using transacted JMS connection factories.
          > An EJB starts a container managed transaction and tries to validate a credit card
          > before creating some information to a database for the user, in case of success
          > an SMS is sent to the user via the transacted JMS queue. If the credit card authentications
          > duration is about the same as the transactions timeout (in this case the default
          > 30 seconds) sometimes the database inserts is committed but the JMS insert is
          > rollbacked. How can this be?
          It should not be.
          >
          > If the authorization duration is much longer than 30 seconds everything works
          > fine (both database and JMS inserts rollbacked), the same is true if a rollback
          > is insured by calling EJBContext.setRollbackOnly(). The problem thus occurs only
          > if the duration is approximately the same as the transaction timeout, it appears
          > that the database insert is not timeouted but the JMS insert is. How can this
          > be if they are both participating in the same transaction.
          >
          > The JMSConnectionFactory used is a Connection factory with XA-enabled. The result
          > is the same also with the default "javax.jms.QueueConnectionFactory" and if we
          > configure our own factory with user transactions enabled.
          >
          > Any help appreciated!
          Make sure that your session is not "transacted". In other words,
          the first parameter to createSession() must be false. There is an
          unfortunate name re-use here. If a session is "transacted", it
          maintains an independent "inner transaction" independent of the
          outer transaction. From the above description, it seems unlikely
          that your application has this wrong, as you say that
          "setRollbackOnly" works - but please check anyway.
          Make sure that you are using a true XA capable driver and database
          (XA "emulation" may not suffice)
          Beyond the above, I do not see what can be going wrong. You
          may want to try posting to the transactions and jdbc newsgroups. Note
          that JMS is appears to be exhibiting the correct behavior, but the
          JDBC operation is not. The JDBC operation appears to have
          its timeout independent of the transaction monitor's timeout.
          Tom