3.9. Transaction Timeouts

Timeout values can be associated with transactions for life cycle control. If a transaction has not terminated (committed or rolled back) before the timeout value elapses, the transaction system automatically rolls it back. The XAResource interface supports a operation allowing the timeout associated with the current transaction to be propagated to the resource manager and, if supported, overrides any default timeout associated with the resource manager. This is useful when long-running transactions have lifetimes that exceed the default. If the timeout is not altered, the resource manager will rollback before the transaction terminates and subsequently cause the transaction to roll back as well.

If no timeout value is explicitly set for a transaction, or a value of 0 is specified, then an implementation-specific default value may be used. In the case of JBoss Transaction Service, how this default value is set depends upon which JTA implementation you are using.

Unfortunately there are situations where imposing the same timeout as the transaction on a resource manager may not be appropriate. For example, the system administrator may need control over the lifetimes of resource managers without allowing that control to be passed to some external entity. JBoss Transaction Service supports an all-or-nothing approach to whether setTransactionTimeout is called on XAResource instances.

If the com.arjuna.ats.jta.xaTransactionTimeoutEnabled property is set to true (the default), it is called on all instances. Alternatively, the setXATransactionTimeoutEnabled method of com.arjuna.ats.jta.common.Configuration can be used.