"jhalliday" wrote : I'm tempted to revise the spi spec such that the method throws SystemException if the arg is true and the tx is in anything other than STATUS_ACTIVE. The JIRA mentions STATUS_PREPARING as a valid state, but I'm not so sure. | Its perfectly valid for "one resource adapter" or synchronization to invoke another resource adapter during the before synchronization or prepare e.g. the hibernate rar (if it was used) delegates work to the jdbc rar. anonymous wrote : | Attempting to timeout and rollback a PREPARING tx is a very dodgy proposition. | Its no where near as bad during the commit phase. ;-) anonymous wrote : | IllegalStateException is probably more appropriate than SystemException, but unchecked. There is also the matter of clarifying the expected time units for the return value. SystemException is for serious failure isn't it? IllegalStateException would be preferable if it is not RollBackOnly or RolledBack. The other bad states (e.g. Commiting/ted) indicate a misuse by the application. e.g. forking threads and re-enlisting the tx in the new threads but not synchronizing the commit across that work. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4137831#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...