Transaction timing out

Question

I have a problem with transaction timing out and I know how to increase the time out interval but I would just like to learn as to what exactly is going on and how I can fix the problem without increasing the timeout.
class RequestProcessor {
public void do() {
// very long process
doSomeWhereLongProcess()
// retrieve another session bean
persistence = (IPersistence) ctx.lookup( IPersistence.JNDI_NAME );
persistence.insert()
doSomeProcess();
public class PersistenceFacade implements IPersistence {
     @PersistenceContext
     private EntityManager em;
// calls an entityManager to retrieve
public void retrieve()
RequestProcessor is a session bean that is being called remotely. In ejb-jar.xml transaction type is set to Bean.
It calls another session bean called PeristenceFacade that contains entity manager to insert entity beans. The transaction type in PersistenceFace
is set to Container.
While still executing a doSomeWhereLongProcess I get notification in log that transaction timed out and when it tries to called PersistenceFacade
I get an exception. Why would it start a transaction even before I looked up a PersistenceFacade?
I tried setting transaction type to Bean in PersistenceFacade but it is complaining that EntityManager must have a transaction.
What is the proper way of handling this type of scenario? Is is simply increasing the timeout or can I handle this differently?
Thanks

Answer 1

Yes, it's perfectly legal to define a bean with bean-managed transaction management that doesn't actually start a transaction. In that case, the question is where the transaction is getting started. Even for beans with container-managed transactions, @PostContruct for a session bean is never a transactional method, so it seems odd that a new transaction would be started there unless some piece of application code is starting it.
You might want to post to a JBoss forum to get more info. You can try running your application on the Java EE SDK or using the verifier in the Java EE SDK to see if it detects any issues.
--ken