In the JSR 352 batch specification there are some issues around transactions with JCA. These issues would mainly be seen with JDBC item readers/writers. Here is kind of a thought dump from a sit down I had with the JCA team. If anyone has any opinions on how this should be handled let's talk it out. I would imagine this is a fairly important issue as generally speaking batch jobs will likely be legacy jobs and JDBC is probably heavily used. *Batch Transactions with JCA* *Problem:* Batch requires that a Transaction.begin() and a Transaction.commit() for each open, close and chunk processed. This causes connections from JCA to potentially cross transactional boundaries. This requires that the JCA CachedConnectionManager (CCM) is enabled for the resource in question (Jesper) *Transaction code should be written like:* Connection c Transaction.begin() c = DataSource.getConnection() c.close() Transaction.commit() *Chunk Processing process:* Transaction.begin() ItemReader.open() ItemWriter.open() Transaction.commit() repeat until item reader returns null Transaction.begin() repeat-on-chunk ItemReader.readItem() ItemProcessor.processItem() ItemWriter.writeItems Transaction.commit() Transaction.begin() ItemReader.close() ItemWriter.close() Transaction.commit() Where seen: * No errors in 8.1+ * Upstream with the tracking set to true and exception is thrown; /subsystem=datasources/data-source=ExampleDS:write-attribute(name=tracking, value=true) * https://gist.github.com/jamezp/cf39f92913425c83929f o This shows where the connection was allocated that is crossing the transaction boundary, and hence killed (Jesper) Questions: * Will the tracking attribute be used often? o The feature is meant to allow people to find where in their code they are making assumptions that isn't true (Jesper) + The corner case is just the "c.close()" call (Jesper) *Possible Fixes:* * Leave batch as is. If the tracking attribute is set to true exceptions will be thrown o Remember that the underlying connection will be killed (Jesper) * Add a property to jBeret to use local (fake) transactions. This is what we currently do and I feel it's just wrong. * Create a deployment descriptor (or possibly a property that can be passed when starting the job) to allow different styles for transactions Example JBoss Way repeat until item reader returns null Transaction.begin() ItemReader.open() ItemWriter.open() repeat-on-chunk ItemReader.readItem() ItemProcessor.processItem() ItemWriter.writeItems() ItemReader.close() ItemWriter.close() Transaction.commit() -- James R. Perkins JBoss by Red Hat

On 02/04/2015 01:42 PM, James R. Perkins wrote: > I'm retracting my email due to my misunderstanding. It's likely most > item readers will not need a JTA data source. Therefore if you use a > non-JTA data source you can cache the connection for the readItem() > method. Any XA resources need to be opened and closed within the scope > of a single transaction. For example ItemWriter.writeItems(List<Object> > items) the XA resource must be opened and closed within this method and > NOT in the ItemWriter.open() and ItemWriter.close() methods. > > In other words, there are no changes needed. It just needs to be noted > one should not cache an XA data source in the open method and attempt to > reuse it later. > Just remember that any non-transactional resources (NoTransaction) needs an explicit .close() in order to be returned to the connection pool. Otherwise you will out of connections fast ;) Scenarios like this can be investigated using the IronJacamar leak detector pool,

http://www.ironjacamar.org/doc/userguide/1.2/en-US/html/ch04.html#configu... since there is no transactional boundary to do the check on. Batch is still a bit up in the air IMHO, and the container is counting on the user to do the right thing. Which we all know doesn't always happen. So, I think it is a good idea to explore different transactional models looking at existing batch frameworks.

Best regards, Jesper

On 02/04/2015 01:55 PM, James R. Perkins wrote: >> Just remember that any non-transactional resources (NoTransaction) >> needs an explicit .close() in order to be returned to the connection >> pool. Otherwise you will out of connections fast ;) Scenarios like >> this can be investigated using the IronJacamar leak detector pool, > > Right and this *should* happen in the Item(Reader|Writer).close() > correct? Of course the user needs to ensure that happens, but it's > "safe" assuming they do right? > Yeah, because there are no bugs in applications. ... Of course that doesn't explain why <ccm debug=true> and the leak detector pool are needed ... must be something else ... try/catch/finally is a good thing.