[jboss-user] SFSB "different tx context" transaction error on jboss 4.2.X

Hi all, We have an transaction error that has recently appeared consistently: a stateful session bean (SFSB) has an application error and throws an exception. The next time the application tries to use the stateful session bean it gets an error: tried to enter Stateful bean with different tx context, contextTx: TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: a640128:983:4af49b0f:299 status: ActionStatus.RUNNING >, methodTx: TransactionImple < ac, BasicAction: a640128:983:4af49b0f:348 status: ActionStatus.RUNNING > Revewing the ejb literature, I see that if the SFSB throws a SystemException (eg. EJBException) w, cause the app server will discard the SFSB instance. Currently the SFSB throws an application exception. This seems like a straightforward fix. This code has been in place for a few years, and we've been running jboss 4.2. for a few years. So we're a bit puzzled "why now?" One change: we have recently upgraded the jdbc drivers (mssql) from to microsoft's version 1.1 to 2.0. The 1.2-and-later-driver handles transaction-id's-in-the-jdbc-connection differently than the earlier 1.1 drivers. (The jdbc connection implementation actually keeps a reference to the current transaction id in the database. After we upgraded the driver, we saw another problem where bad exception handling kept a stale 'mssql transaction id' around in the jdbc connection. Properly closing the result set/stmt/connection upon error solved this jdbc transaction-id-hanging-around problem). After reviewing the jboss 4.2.3 code, however, I suspect that the 'jdbc driver version' change may in not in fact pertain at all to our stateful session bean problem, i.e. it's a 'red herring',. The arjuna/user-transaction/statefulsession code does not even touch the jdbc driver. Unless I missed something So a few follow-in questions. Can anyone comment/weigh-in/opine/pontificate: * whether they've seen this issue? * throwing EJBException's will solve this problem * comment * any tips for debugging solving these types of problems? thanks, bill