Spring nested @Transactional rollback only

Recently we get some odd xxx Thread got an uncaught exception in Nagios alters. and the corresponding exception in log is :

Could not commit JPA transaction; nested exception is javax.persistence.RollbackException: Transaction marked as rollbackOnly org.springframework.transaction.TransactionSystemException: Could not commit JPA transaction; nested exception is javax.persistence.RollbackException: Transaction marked as rollbackOnly
    at org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager.doCommit(JpaTransactionManager.java:521)
    at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.processCommit(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:754)
    at org.springframework.transaction.support.AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.commit(AbstractPlatformTransactionManager.java:723)
    at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAspectSupport.commitTransactionAfterReturning(TransactionAspectSupport.java:393)
    at org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor.invoke(TransactionInterceptor.java:120)
    at org.springframework.aop.framework.ReflectiveMethodInvocation.proceed(ReflectiveMethodInvocation.java:172)
    at org.springframework.aop.framework.Cglib2AopProxy$DynamicAdvisedInterceptor.intercept(Cglib2AopProxy.java:622)
    at methodA()...

Turns out the reason is we have a nested method also marked @Transactional and some exception happened inside which causes Spring marked it as RollBackonly in the thread local TransactionStatus.

@Transactional
public void outterMethod(){

 try{
  A a = new A();
  somedao.persist(a)
  ...
  nestedMethodWithTransationalAndHadExceptionInsde();
  ...}
 catch{
  //HERE, transaction is already marked as rollback only!
  somedao.merge(a);
 }
}

So the possible solution is:

• remove the @Transacional from the nested method if it does not really require transaction control. So even it has exception, it just bubbles up and does not affect transactional stuff.
• if nested method does need transaction control, make it as REQUIRE_NEW for the propagation policy that way even if throws exception and marked as rollback only, the caller will not be affected.

One caveat is :

Only unchecked exceptions (that is, subclasses of java.lang.RuntimeException) are rollbacked by default. For the case, a checked exception is thrown, the transaction will be committed!

And one customization can be done very easily by just adding the parameter rollBackFor to the @Transactional attribute:

@Transactional(rollbackFor = Exception.class)

Some source code from spring transactional implementation:

1. the Transaction abstraction

public interface PlatformTransactionManager {
    TransactionStatus getTransaction(TransactionDefinition definition) throws TransactionException;
    void commit(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;
    void rollback(TransactionStatus status) throws TransactionException;
}

2. The TransactionDefinition

public interface TransactionDefinition {
    // Propagations
    int PROPAGATION_REQUIRED = 0;
    int PROPAGATION_SUPPORTS = 1;
    int PROPAGATION_MANDATORY = 2;
    int PROPAGATION_REQUIRES_NEW = 3;
    int PROPAGATION_NOT_SUPPORTED = 4;
    int PROPAGATION_NEVER = 5;
    int PROPAGATION_NESTED = 6;
    // Isolations
    int ISOLATION_DEFAULT = -1;
    int ISOLATION_READ_UNCOMMITTED = Connection.TRANSACTION_READ_UNCOMMITTED;
    int ISOLATION_READ_COMMITTED = Connection.TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED;
    int ISOLATION_REPEATABLE_READ = Connection.TRANSACTION_REPEATABLE_READ;
    int ISOLATION_SERIALIZABLE = Connection.TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE;
    // timeout
    int TIMEOUT_DEFAULT = -1;

    // behaviors
    int getPropagationBehavior();
    int getIsolationLevel();
    int getTimeout();
    boolean isReadOnly();
    String getName();
}

3. the TransactionStatus

public interface TransactionStatus extends SavepointManager, Flushable {
    boolean isNewTransaction();
    boolean hasSavepoint();
    void setRollbackOnly();
    boolean isRollbackOnly();
    void flush();
    boolean isCompleted();
}

A Chinese article about the source code.