The preferred approach is to use Spring's high level persistence integration APIs. These do not replace native APIs, but internally handle resource creation/reuse, cleanup, and optional transaction synchronization (i.e. event notification) of the resources and exception mapping so that user data access code doesn't have to worry about these concerns at all, but can concentrate purely on non-boilerplate persistence logic. Generally, the same inversion of control approach is used for all persistence APIs. In this approach the API has a callback method or delegate that presents the user code with the relevant resource ready to use - i.e. a DbCommand with its Connection and Transaction properties set based on the transaction option metadata. These classes go by the naming scheme 'template', examples of which are AdoTemplate and HibernateTemplate. Convenient 'one-liner' helper methods in these template classes build upon the core callback/IoC design by providing specific implementations of the callback interface.

A utility class can be used to directly obtain a connection/transaction pair that is aware of the transactional calling context and returns and pair suitable for that context. The class ConnectionUtils contains the static method ConnectionTxPair GetConnectionTxPair(IDbProvider provider) which serves this purpose.

The aim of this section is to dispel the mystique that is sometimes associated with the use of declarative transactions. It is all very well for this reference documentation to simply tell you to annotate your classes with the Transaction attribute and add some boilerplate XML to your IoC configuration, and then expect you to understand how it all works. This section will explain the inner workings of Spring's declarative transaction infrastructure to help you navigate your way back upstream to calmer waters in the event of transaction-related issues.

	Note
	Looking at the Spring source code is a good way to get a real understanding of Spring's transaction support. You should find the API documentation informative and complete. We suggest turning the logging level to 'DEBUG' in your Spring-enabled application(s) during development to better see what goes on under the hood.

The most important concepts to grasp with regard to Spring's declarative transaction support are that this support is enabled via AOP proxies, and that the transactional advice is driven by metadata (currently XML- or attribute-based). The combination of a proxy with transactional metadata yields an AOP proxy that uses a TransactionInterceptor in conjunction with an appropriate IPlatformTransactionManager implementation to drive transactions around method invocations.

	Note
	Although knowledge of AOP (and specifically Spring AOP) is not required in order to use Spring's declarative transaction support, it can help. Spring AOP is thoroughly covered in the AOP chapter.

Conceptually, calling a method on a transactional proxy looks like this.

The flow of events is the following. First the set of objects you would like to apply AOP transactional advice to are identified. There are a variety of ways to configure the Spring IoC container to create proxies for the defined object definitions. The standard Spring AOP based options are

There is also a convenience subclass of ProxyFactoryObject, namely TransactionProxyFactoryObject, that sets some common default values for the specific case of applying transactional advice.

The DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator is very powerful and is the means by which Spring can be configured to use attributes to identify the pointcuts where transaction advice should be applied. The advisor that performs that task is TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor.

	Note
	Note, think of the word 'Attribute' in this class name not as the .NET attribute but as the transaction 'options' you want to specify. This name is inherited from the Java version and the name will be changed in the RC1 release to avoid confusion since a common naming convention when creating classes are .NET attributes is to put the word 'Attribute' in the name.

Which one of the many options available should you choose for your development? That depends, each one has it own set of pro's and con's which will be discussed in turn in the following sections.

With the transactional AOP proxy now created we can discuss the flow of events in the code as proxied methods are invoked. When the method is invoked, before calling the target object's method, a transaction is created if one hasn't already been created. Then the target method is invoked. If there was an exception throw, the transaction is typically rolled back, but it can also be committed if the exception type specified in the transaction option, NoRolbackFor, matches the thrown exception. If no exception was thrown, that is taken as a sign of success and the transaction is committed.

When using other AOP advice with the transactional advice you can set the order of the 'interceptor chain' so that, for example, performance monitoring advice always precede the transactional advice.

Consider the following interface. The intent is to convey the concepts to you can concentrate on the transaction usage and not have to worry about domain specific details. The ITestObjectManager is a poor-mans business service layer - the implementation of which wll make two DAO calls. Clearly this example is overly simplistic from the service layer perspective as there isn't any business logic at all!. The 'service' interface is shown below.

public interface ITestObjectManager 
{
  void SaveTwoTestObjects(TestObject to1, TestObject to2);

  void DeleteTwoTestObjects(string name1, string name2);
}

The implementation of ITestObjectManager is shown below

public class TestObjectManager : ITestObjectManager 
{

   // Fields/Properties ommited

   [Transaction()]
   public void SaveTwoTestObjects(TestObject to1, TestObject to2)
   {
     TestObjectDao.Create(to1.Name, to1.Age);
     TestObjectDao.Create(to2.Name, to1.Age);
   }

   [Transaction()]
   public void DeleteTwoTestObjects(string name1, string name2)
   {
     TestObjectDao.Delete(name1);
     TestObjectDao.Delete(name2);
   }
}

Note the Transaction attribute on the methods. Other options such as isolation level can also be specified but in this example the default settings are used. However, please note that the mere presence of the Transaction attribute is not enough to actually turn on the transactional behavior - the Transaction attribute is simply metadata that can be consumed by something that is Transaction attribute-aware and that can use said metadata to configure the appropriate objects with transactional behavior.

The TestObjectDao property has basic create update delete and find method for the 'domain' object TestObject. TestObject in turn has simple properties like name and age.

public interface ITestObjectDao
{
  void Create(string name, int age);
  void Update(TestObject to);
  void Delete(string name);
  TestObject FindByName(string name);
  IList FindAll();
}

The Create and Delete method implementation is shown below. Note that this uses the AdoTemplate class discussed in the following chapter. Refer to Section 17.4, “Resource synchronization with transactions” for information on the interaction between Spring's high level persistence integration APIs and transaction management features.

public class TestObjectDao : AdoDaoSupport, ITestObjectDao
{
   public void Create(string name, int age)
   {
       AdoTemplate.ExecuteNonQuery(CommandType.Text,
           String.Format("insert into TestObjects(Age, Name) VALUES ({0}, '{1}')", 
           age, name));
   }

   public void Delete(string name)
   {
       AdoTemplate.ExecuteNonQuery(CommandType.Text,
           String.Format("delete from TestObjects where Name = '{0}'",
           name));
   }
}

The TestObjectManager is configured with the DAO objects by standard dependency injection techniques. The client code, which in this case directly asks the Spring IoC container for an instance of ITestObjectManager, will receive a transaction proxy with transaction options based on the attribute metadata. Note that typically the ITestObjectManager would be set on yet another higher level object via dependency injection, for example a web service.

The client calling code is shown below

IApplicationContext ctx =
   new XmlApplicationContext("assembly://Spring.Data.Integration.Tests/Spring.Data/autoDeclarativeServices.xml");

ITestObjectManager mgr = ctx["testObjectManager"] as ITestObjectManager; 

TestObject to1 = new TestObject();
to1.Name = "Jack";
to1.Age = 7;

TestObject to2 = new TestObject();
to2.Name = "Jill";
to2.Age = 8;

mgr.SaveTwoTestObjects(to1, to2);

mgr.DeleteTwoTestObjects("Jack", "Jill");

            

The configuration of the object definitions of the DAO and manager classes is shown below.

<objects xmlns='http://www.springframework.net'
         xmlns:db="http://www.springframework.net/database">

    <db:provider id="DbProvider" 
                  provider="SqlServer-1.1" 
                  connectionString="Data Source=(local);Database=Spring;User ID=springqa;Password=springqa;Trusted_Connection=False"/>

    <object id="transactionManager" 
            type="Spring.Data.AdoPlatformTransactionManager, Spring.Data">
            
        <property name="DbProvider" ref="DbProvider"/>
    </object>
        
    <object id="adoTemplate" type="Spring.Data.AdoTemplate, Spring.Data">
        <property name="DbProvider" ref="DbProvider"/>                
    </object>

    <object id="testObjectDao" type="Spring.Data.TestObjectDao, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
        <property name="AdoTemplate" ref="adoTemplate"/>
    </object>
            
    
    <!-- The object that performs multiple data access operations -->
    <object id="testObjectManager" 
            type="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
        <property name="TestObjectDao" ref="testObjectDao"/>
    </object>
 
    
</objects>

This is standard Spring configuration and as such provides you with the flexibility to parameterize your connection string and to easily switch implementations of your DAO objects. The configuration to create a transactional proxy for the manager class is shown below.

    <!-- The rest of the config file is common no matter how many objects you add -->
    <!-- that you would like to have declarative tx management applied to -->    
    
    <object id="autoProxyCreator" 
            type="Spring.Aop.Framework.AutoProxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator, Spring.Aop">
    </object>
    
    <object id="transactionAdvisor"
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor, Spring.Data">
        <property name="TransactionInterceptor" ref="transactionInterceptor"/>
    </object>
    
    
    <!-- Transaction Interceptor -->
    <object id="transactionInterceptor" 
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.TransactionInterceptor, Spring.Data">
        <property name="TransactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
        <property name="TransactionAttributeSource" ref="attributeTransactionAttributeSource"/>        
    </object>
    
    <object id="attributeTransactionAttributeSource"
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.AttributesTransactionAttributeSource, Spring.Data">    
    </object>

Granted this is a bit verbose and hard to grok at first site - however you only need to grok this once as it is 'boiler plate' XML you can reuse across multiple projects. What these object definitions are doing is to instruct Spring's to look for all objects within the IoC configuration that have the [Transaction] attribute and then apply the AOP transaction interceptor to them based on the transaction options contained in the attribute. The attribute serves both as a pointcut and as the declaration of transactional option information.

Since this XML fragment is not tied to any specific object references it can be included in its own file and then imported via the <import> element. In examples and test code this XML configuraiton fragment is named declarativeServices.xml See ??? for more information.

The classes and their roles in this configuration fragment are listed below

Refer to the following section for a more convenient way to achieve the same goal of declarative transaction management using attributes.

Spring provides a custom XML schema to simplify the configuration of declarative transaction management. If you would like to perform attribute driven transaction management you first need to register the custom namespace parser for the transaction namespace. This can be done in the application configuration file as shown below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>

  <configSections>

    <sectionGroup name="spring">
      <section name="parsers" type="Spring.Context.Support.NamespaceParsersSectionHandler, Spring.Core" />
      
      <!-- other spring config section like context, typeAliases, etc not shown for brevity -->

    </sectionGroup>
  </configSections>

  <spring>
    
    <parsers>
      <parser type="Spring.Data.Config.DatabaseNamespaceParser, Spring.Data" />
      <parser type="Spring.Transaction.Config.TxNamespaceParser, Spring.Data" />
      <parser type="Spring.Aop.Config.AopNamespaceParser, Spring.Aop" />
    </parsers>

   </spring>

  </configSections>

Instead using the XML configuration listed at the end of the previous section (declarativeServices.xml you can use the following. Note that the schemaLocation in the objects element is needed only if you have not installed Spring's schema into the proper VS.NET 2005 location. See the chapter on VS.NET integration for more details.

<objects xmlns="http://www.springframework.net"
	        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.net/schema/tx"
         xmlns:db="http://www.springframework.net/database"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.net http://www.springframework.net/schema/objects/spring-objects.xsd
         http://www.springframework.net/schema/tx http://www.springframework.net/schema/tx/spring-tx-1.1.xsd"
         http://www.springframework.net/schema/tx http://www.springframework.net/schema/tx/spring-database.xsd"> 

    <db:provider id="DbProvider" 
                  provider="SqlServer-1.1" 
                  connectionString="Data Source=(local);Database=Spring;User ID=springqa;Password=springqa;Trusted_Connection=False"/>

    <object id="transactionManager" 
            type="Spring.Data.AdoPlatformTransactionManager, Spring.Data">
            
        <property name="DbProvider" ref="DbProvider"/>
    </object>
        
    <object id="adoTemplate" type="Spring.Data.AdoTemplate, Spring.Data">
        <property name="DbProvider" ref="DbProvider"/>                
    </object>

    <object id="testObjectDao" type="Spring.Data.TestObjectDao, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
        <property name="AdoTemplate" ref="adoTemplate"/>
    </object>
            
    
    <!-- The object that performs multiple data access operations -->
    <object id="testObjectManager" 
            type="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
        <property name="TestObjectDao" ref="testObjectDao"/>
    </object>

   
    <tx:attribute-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>

</objects>

	Tip
	You can actually omit the 'transaction-manager' attribute in the <tx:attribute-driven/> tag if the object name of the IPlatformTransactionManager that you want to wire in has the name 'transactionManager'. If the PlatformTransactionManager object that you want to dependency inject has any other name, then you have to be explicit and use the 'transaction-manager' attribute as in the example above.

The various optional element of the <tx:attribute-driven/> tag are summarised in the following table

Note

The "proxy-target-type" attribute on the <tx:attribute-driven/> element controls what type of transactional proxies are created for classes annotated with the Transaction attribute. If "proxy-target-type" attribute is set to "true", then inheritance-based proxies will be created. If "proxy-target-type" is "false" or if the attribute is omitted, then composition based proxies will be created. (See the section entitled Section 13.6, “Proxying mechanisms” for a detailed examination of the different proxy types.)

You can also define the transactional semantics you want to apply through the use of a <tx:advice> definition. This lets you define the transaction metadata such as propagation and isolation level as well as the methos for which that metadata applies external to the code unlike the case of using the transaction attribute. The <tx:advice> definition creates in an instance of a ITransactionAttributeSource during parsing time. Switching to use <tx:advice> instead of <tx:attribute-driven/> in the example would look like the following

<tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="transactionManager">
  <tx:attributes>
    <tx:method name="Save*"/>   
    <tx:method name="Delete*"/>  
  </tx:attributes>
</tx:advice>

This says that all methods that start with Save and Delete would have associated with them the default settings of transaction metadata. These default values are listed below..

Here is an example using other elements of the <tx:method/> definition

  <!-- the transactional advice (i.e. what 'happens'; see the <aop:advisor/> bean below) -->
  <tx:advice id="txAdvice" transaction-manager="transactionManager">
    <!-- the transactional semantics... -->
    <tx:attributes>
      <!-- all methods starting with 'get' are read-only -->
      <tx:method name="Get*" read-only="true"/>
      <!-- other methods use the default transaction settings (see below) -->
      <tx:method name="*"/>
    </tx:attributes>
  </tx:advice>

The <tx:advice/> definition reads as “... all methods on starting with 'Get' are to execute in the context of a read-only transaction, and all other methods are to execute with the default transaction semantics”. The 'transaction-manager' attribute of the <tx:advice/> tag is set to the name of the PlatformTransactionManager object that is going to actually drive the transactions (in this case the 'transactionManager' object).

You can also use the AOP namespace <aop:advisor> element to tie together a pointcut and the above defined advice as shown below.

<object id="serviceOperation" type="RegularExpressionPointcut">
    <property name="pattern" value="Spring.TxQuickStart.Services.*"/>
</object>

<aop:config>
     
    <aop:advisor pointcut-ref="serviceOperation" advice-ref="txAdvice"/>

</aop:config>

This is assuming the the service layer class, TestObjectManager, in the namespace Spring.TxQuickStart.Services. The <aop:config/> definition ensures that the transactional advice defined by the 'txAdvice' object actually executes at the appropriate points in the program. First we define a pointcut that matches any operation defined on classes in the Spring.TxQuickStart.Services (you can be more selective in your regular expression). Then we associate the pointcut with the 'txAdvice' using an advisor. In the example, the result indicates that at the execution of a 'SaveTwoTestObjects' and 'DeleteTwoTestObject', the advice defined by 'txAdvice' will be run.

The various transactional settings that can be specified using the <tx:advice/> tag. The default <tx:advice/> settings are listed below and are the same as when you use the Transaction attribute.

These default settings can be changed; the various attributes of the <tx:method/> tags that are nested within <tx:advice/> and <tx:attributes/> tags are summarized below:

The Transaction attribute is metadata that specifies that a class or method must have transactional semantics. The default Transaction attribute settings are

The default settings can, of course, be changed; the various properties of the Transaction attribute are summarised in the following table

Note that setting the TransactionPropagation to Nested will throw a NestedTransactionNotSupportedException in a case when actual nested transations occurs, i.e. not in the case of applying the Nested propagation but in fact no nested calls are made. This will be fixed for the Spring 1.2 release for SqlServer and Oracle which support nested transactions. Also note, that changing of isolation levels on a per-method basis is also scheduled for the Spring 1.2 release since it requires detailed command text metadata for each dbprovider.. Please check the forums for news on when this feature will be introduced into the nightly builds.

If you specify an exception type for 'NoRollbackFor' the action taken is to commit the work that has been done in the database up to the point where the exception occurred. The exception is still propagated out to the calling code.

The ReadOnly boolean is a hint to the data access technology to enable read-only optimizatations. This currenlty has no effect in Spring's ADO.NET framework. If you would like to enable read-only optimizations in ADO.NET this is generally done via the 'Mode=Read' or 'Mode=Read-Only" options in the connection string. Check your database provider for more information. In the case of NHibernate the flush mode is set to Never when a new Session is created for the transaction.

Throwing exceptions to indicate failure and assuming success is an easier and less invasive programming model than performing the same task programmatically - ContextUtil.MyTransactionVote or TransactionScope.Complete. The rollback options are a means to influence the outcome of the transaction based on the exception type which adds an extra degree of flexibility.

Having any exception trigger a rollback has similar behavior as applying the AutoComplete attribute available when using .NET Enterprise Services. The difference with AutoComplete is that using AutoComplete also is coupled to the lifetime of the ServicedCompent since it sets ContextUtil.DeactivateOnReturn to true. For a stateless DAO layer this is not an issue bit it could be in other scenarios. Spring's transactional aspect does not affect the lifetime of your object.

if you choose not to use the transaction namespace for declarative transaction management then you can use 'lower level' object definitions to configure declarative transactions. This approach was shown in the first example. The use of Spring's autoproxy functionality defines criteria to select a collection of objects to create a transactional AOP proxy. There are two AutoProxy classes that you can use, ObjectNameAutoProxyCreator and DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator. If you are using the new transaction namespace support you do not need to configure these objects as a DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator is created 'under the covers' while parsing the transaction namespace elements

    <object name="autoProxyCreator"
            type="Spring.Aop.Framework.AutoProxy.ObjectNameAutoProxyCreator, Spring.Aop">
            
        <property name="InterceptorNames" value="transactionInterceptor"/>
        <property name="ObjectNames">
            <list>
                <idref local="testObjectManager"/>
            </list>
        </property>
    </object>

The TransactionProxyFactoryObject is easier to use than a ProxyFactoryObject for most cases since the transaction interceptor and transaction attributes are properties of this object. This removes the need to declare them as seperate objects. Also, unlike the case with the ProxyFactoryObject, you do not have to give fully qualified method names, just the normal 'short' method name. Wild card matchin on the method name is also allowed, which in practice helps to enforce a common naming convention to the methods of your DAOs. The example from chapter 5 is shown here using a TransactionProxyFactoryObject.

    <object id="testObjectManager" 
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryObject, Spring.Data">
        
        <property name="PlatformTransactionManager" ref="adoTransactionManager"/>
        <property name="Target">
            <object type="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
                <property name="TestObjectDao" ref="testObjectDao"/>
            </object>
        </property> 
        <property name="TransactionAttributes">
            <name-values>
                <add key="Save*" value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>
                <add key="Delete*" value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>
            </name-values>
        </property>
    </object>
    

Note the use of an inner object definition for the target which will make it impossible to obtain an unproxied reference to the TestObjectManager.

As can be seen in the above definition, the TransactionAttributes property holds a collection name/value pairs. The key of each pair is a method or methods (a * wildcard ending is optional) to apply transactional semantics to. Note that the method name is not qualified with a package name, but rather is considered relative to the class of the target object being wrapped. The value portion of the name/value pair is the TransactionAttribute itself that needs to be applied. When specifying it as a string value as in this example, it's in String format as defined by TransactionAttributeEditor. This format is:

PROPAGATION_NAME,ISOLATION_NAME,readOnly,timeout_NNNN,+Exception1,-Exception2

Note that the only mandatory portion of the string is the propagation setting. The default transactions semantics which apply are as follows:

Multiple rollback rules can be specified here, comma-separated. A - prefix forces rollback; a + prefix specifies commit. Under the covers the IDictionary of name value pairs wil be converted to an instance of NameMatchTransactionAttributeSource

The TransactionProxyFactoryObject allows you to set optional "pre" and "post" advice, for additional interception behavior, using the "PreInterceptors" and "PostInterceptors" properties. Any number of pre and post advices can be set, and their type may be Advisor (in which case they can contain a pointcut), MethodInterceptor or any advice type supported by the current Spring configuration (such as ThrowsAdvice, AfterReturningtAdvice or BeforeAdvice, which are supported by default.) These advices must support a shared-instance model. If you need transactional proxying with advanced AOP features such as stateful mixins, it's normally best to use the generic ProxyFactoryObject, rather than the TransactionProxyFactoryObject convenience proxy creator.

Using abstract object definitions in conjunction with a TransactionProxyFactoryObject provides you a more concise means to reuse common configuration information instead of duplicating it over and over again with a definition of a TransactionProxyFactoryObject per object. Objects that are to be proxied typically have the same pattern of method names, Save*, Find*, etc. This commonality can be placed in an abstract object definition, which other object definitions refer to and change only the configuration information which is different. An abstract object definition is shown below

   <object id="txProxyTemplate" abstract="true"
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryObject, Spring.Data">
        
        <property name="PlatformTransactionManager" ref="adoTransactionManager"/>

        <property name="TransactionAttributes">
            <name-values>
                <add key="Save*" value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>
                <add key="Delete*" value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>
            </name-values>
        </property>
    </object>

Subsequent definitions can refer to this 'base' configuration as shown below

<object id="testObjectManager" parent="txProxyTemplate">
    <property name="Target">
            <object type="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
                <property name="TestObjectDao" ref="testObjectDao"/>
            </object>
    </property> 
</object>

Using the general ProxyFactoryObject to declar transactions gives you a great deal of control over the proxy created since you can specify additional advice, such as for logging or performance. Based on the the example shown previously a sample configuration using ProxyFactoryObject is shown below

    <object id="testObjectManagerTarget" type="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests">
        <property name="TestObjectDao" ref="testObjectDao"/>
    </object>

    <object id="testObjectManager" type="Spring.Aop.Framework.ProxyFactoryObject, Spring.Aop">
        
        <property name="Target" ref="testObjectManagerTarget"/>
        <property name="ProxyInterfaces">
            <value>Spring.Data.ITestObjectManager</value>
        </property>
        <property name="InterceptorNames">
            <value>transactionInterceptor</value>
        </property>      
        
    </object>

The ProxyFactoryObject will create a proxy for the Target, i.e. a TestObjectManager instance. An inner object definition could also have been used such that it would make it impossible for to obtain an un proxied object from the container. The interceptor name refers to the following definition.

    <object id="transactionInterceptor" type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.TransactionInterceptor, Spring.Data">

        <property name="TransactionManager" ref="adoTransactionManager"/>

        <!-- note do not have converter from string to this property type registered -->
        <property name="TransactionAttributeSource" ref="methodMapTransactionAttributeSource"/>        
    </object>
    
    <object name="methodMapTransactionAttributeSource" 
            type="Spring.Transaction.Interceptor.MethodMapTransactionAttributeSource, Spring.Data">
        <property name="MethodMap">
           <dictionary>           
              <entry key="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager.SaveTwoTestObjects, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests" 
                     value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>
              <entry key="Spring.Data.TestObjectManager.DeleteTwoTestObjects, Spring.Data.Integration.Tests" 
                     value="PROPAGATION_REQUIRED"/>                     
           </dictionary>        
        </property>     
    </object>

The transaction options for each method are specified using a dictionary containing the class name + method name, assembly as the key and the value is of the form

All but the propagation behavior are optional. The + and - are used in front of the name of an exception. Minus indicates to rollback if the exception is thrown, the Plus indicates to commit if the exception is thrown.

The TransactionTemplate adopts the same approach as other Spring templates such as AdoTemplate and HibernateTemplate. It uses a callback approach, to free application code from having to do the boilerplate acquisition and release of resources. Granted that the using construct of System.Transaction alleviates much of this. One key difference with the approach taken with the TransactionTemplate is that a commit is assumed - throwing an exception triggers a rollback instead of using the TransactionScope API to commit or rollback.

Like many of the other template classes in Spring, a TransactionTemplate instance is threadsafe.

Application code that must execute in a transaction context looks like this. Note that the ITransactionCallback can be used to return a value:

TransactionTemplate tt = new TransactionTemplate(TransactionManager);

string userId = "Stewie";

object result = tt.Execute(delegate {
                             dao.UpdateOperation(userId);
                             return dao.UpdateOperation2();
                           });

This code example is specific to .NET 2.0 since it uses anonymous delegates, which provides a particularly elegant means to invoke a callback function as local variables can be referred to inside the delegate, i.e. userId. In this case the ITransactionStatus was not exposed in the delegate (delegate can infer the signature to use), but one could also obtain a reference to the ITransactionStatus instance and set the RollbackOnly property to trigger a rollback - or alternatively throw an exception. This is shown below

tt.Execute(delegate(ITransactionStatus status)
           {
             adoTemplate.ExecuteNonQuery(CommandType.Text, "insert into dbo.Debits (DebitAmount) VALUES (@amount)", "amount", DbType.Decimal, 0,555);
             // decide you need to rollback...
             status.RollbackOnly = true;
             return null;
           });

If you are using .NET 1.1 then you should provide a normal delegate reference or an instance of a class that implements the ITransactionCallback interface. This is shown below

tt.Execute(new TransactionRollbackTxCallback(amount));


    public class TransactionRollbackTxCallback : ITransactionCallback
    {
        private decimal amount;

        public TransactionRollbackTxCallback(decimal amount)
        {
            this.amount = amount
        }

        public object DoInTransaction(ITransactionStatus status)
        {
             adoTemplate.ExecuteNonQuery(CommandType.Text, "insert into dbo.Debits (DebitAmount) VALUES (@amount)", "amount", DbType.Decimal, 0,555);
             // decide you need to rollback...
             status.RollbackOnly = true;
             return null;
        }
    }

Application classes wishing to use the TransactionTemplate must have access to a IPlatformTransactionManager (which will typically be supplied to the class via dependency injection). It is easy to unit test such classes with a mock or stub IPlatformTransactionManager.

You can also use the PlatformTransactionManager directly to manage your transaction. Simply pass the implementation of the PlatformTransactionManager you're using to your object via a object reference through standard Dependency Injection techniques. Then, using the TransactionDefinition and ITransactionStatus objects, you can initiate transactions, rollback and commit.

DefaultTransactionDefinition def = new DefaultTransactionDefinition();
def.PropagationBehavior = TransactionPropagation.Required;

ITransactionStatus status = transactionManager.GetTransaction(def);

try
{
  // execute your business logic here
} catch (Exception e)
{
  transactionManager.Rollback(status);
  throw;
}
transactionManager.Commit(status);

Note that a corresponding 'using TransactionManagerScope' class can be modeled to get similar API usage to System.Transactions TransactionScope.