TopLink in WebLogic Server 10

Question

Hi,
does anybody have experience with the use of TopLink in WebLogic Server 10.0?
Wenn I use TopLink as JPA persistence provider, I receive a javax.persistence.TransactionRequiredException ("Exception Description: No transaction is currently active") for every method containing updates.
However, transaction attributes are set correctly, and the same application runs without this
problem if I use Kodo instead of TopLink. The application also runs when using TopLink and OC4J.
Do I have to set something instructing TopLink how to find the transaction manager?
Any help is appreciated.
Cheers,
Andreas Geppert

Answer 1

OK through days of long searching I have found what I believe to be the correct answer that James was hinting at. His link to EclipseLink was what eventually got me there. I already had working code but I wasn't sure WHY it worked. Then I found very similar code to what I'd already done in EclilpseLink source, in the org.eclipse.persistence.transaction.wls.WebLogicTransactionController class.
You need to extend the JPA target server. Here is the persistence.xml snippet:
<property name="toplink.target-server" value="your.package.WebLogicTransactionController"/>
Then create the class:
package your.package;
import javax.transaction.TransactionManager;
import oracle.toplink.essentials.transaction.JTATransactionController;
public class WebLogicTransactionController extends JTATransactionController
private static final String JNDI_TRANSACTION_MANAGER_NAME = "javax.transaction.TransactionManager";
protected TransactionManager acquireTransactionManager() throws Exception {
TransactionManager mgr = (TransactionManager)jndiLookup(JNDI_TRANSACTION_MANAGER_NAME);
return mgr;
If you do this, it should just work. You shouldn't need to change any other code, the UserTransactions will be injected correctly.
If you look at the EclipseLink WebLogicTransactionController, you'll see it uses a different JNDI name. I've used the general "javax.transaction.TransactionManager" lookup because I believe this is standard as of Weblogic 10.
http://e-docs.bea.com/wls/docs100/jta/jtaapi.html
Hope this helps you (if you haven't already figured it out yourself).