[09:16] <jhalliday1> yup, commit has to clean up before returning control to the caller by throwing Rollback|Heuristic Exception.  note that the remaining beforeCompletion Syncs may not be called in such case, since they don't (by default) get executed on rollback, only on commit.
[09:17] <sebersole> yes, before-syncs i get that
[09:17] <sebersole> ok, so..
[09:17] <sebersole> on a failed commit jta says that the transaction should attempt a rollback and throw an exception
[09:18] <sebersole> so is there a specific place I can reference for that "rule"?
[09:19] <jhalliday1> yup, it has to reach a terminal state and if commit isn't possible that means rollback, or maybe some messy heuristic.  it's not spelled out in the spec, it's inferred from 'complete the transaction' and 'throws RollbackException'.