If a Hibernate persistence layer runs in a non-managed environment, database connections are usually handled by simple (i.e. non-DataSource) connection pools from which Hibernate obtains connections as needed. The session/transaction handling idiom looks like this:

// Non-managed environment idiom
Session sess = factory.openSession();
Transaction tx = null;
try {
    tx = sess.beginTransaction();

    // do some work
    ...

    tx.commit();
}
catch (RuntimeException e) {
    if (tx != null) tx.rollback();
    throw e; // or display error message
}
finally {
    sess.close();
}

You don't have to flush() the Session explicitly - the call to commit() automatically triggers the synchronization (depending upon the FlushMode for the session. A call to close() marks the end of a session. The main implication of close() is that the JDBC connection will be relinquished by the session. This Java code is portable and runs in both non-managed and JTA environments.

A much more flexible solution is Hibernate's built-in "current session" context management, as described earlier:

// Non-managed environment idiom with getCurrentSession()
try {
    factory.getCurrentSession().beginTransaction();

    // do some work
    ...

    factory.getCurrentSession().getTransaction().commit();
}
catch (RuntimeException e) {
    factory.getCurrentSession().getTransaction().rollback();
    throw e; // or display error message
}

You will very likely never see these code snippets in a regular application; fatal (system) exceptions should always be caught at the "top". In other words, the code that executes Hibernate calls (in the persistence layer) and the code that handles RuntimeException (and usually can only clean up and exit) are in different layers. The current context management by Hibernate can significantly simplify this design, as all you need is access to a SessionFactory. Exception handling is discussed later in this chapter.

Note that you should select org.hibernate.transaction.JDBCTransactionFactory (which is the default), and for the second example "thread" as your hibernate.current_session_context_class.

If your persistence layer runs in an application server (e.g. behind EJB session beans), every datasource connection obtained by Hibernate will automatically be part of the global JTA transaction. You can also install a standalone JTA implementation and use it without EJB. Hibernate offers two strategies for JTA integration.

If you use bean-managed transactions (BMT) Hibernate will tell the application server to start and end a BMT transaction if you use the Transaction API. So, the transaction management code is identical to the non-managed environment.

// BMT idiom
Session sess = factory.openSession();
Transaction tx = null;
try {
    tx = sess.beginTransaction();

    // do some work
    ...

    tx.commit();
}
catch (RuntimeException e) {
    if (tx != null) tx.rollback();
    throw e; // or display error message
}
finally {
    sess.close();
}

If you want to use a transaction-bound Session, that is, the getCurrentSession() functionality for easy context propagation, you will have to use the JTA UserTransaction API directly:

// BMT idiom with getCurrentSession()
try {
    UserTransaction tx = (UserTransaction)new InitialContext()
                            .lookup("java:comp/UserTransaction");

    tx.begin();

    // Do some work on Session bound to transaction
    factory.getCurrentSession().load(...);
    factory.getCurrentSession().persist(...);

    tx.commit();
}
catch (RuntimeException e) {
    tx.rollback();
    throw e; // or display error message
}

With CMT, transaction demarcation is done in session bean deployment descriptors, not programmatically, hence, the code is reduced to:

// CMT idiom
 Session sess = factory.getCurrentSession();

 // do some work
 ...

In a CMT/EJB even rollback happens automatically, since an unhandled RuntimeException thrown by a session bean method tells the container to set the global transaction to rollback. This means you do not need to use the Hibernate Transaction API at all with BMT or CMT, and you get automatic propagation of the "current" Session bound to the transaction.

Note that you should choose org.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory if you use JTA directly (BMT), and org.hibernate.transaction.CMTTransactionFactory in a CMT session bean, when you configure Hibernate's transaction factory. Remember to also set hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class. Furthermore, make sure that your hibernate.current_session_context_class is either unset (backwards compatibility), or set to "jta".

The getCurrentSession() operation has one downside in a JTA environment. There is one caveat to the use of after_statement connection release mode, which is then used by default. Due to a silly limitation of the JTA spec, it is not possible for Hibernate to automatically clean up any unclosed ScrollableResults or Iterator instances returned by scroll() or iterate(). You must release the underlying database cursor by calling ScrollableResults.close() or Hibernate.close(Iterator) explicitly from a finally block. (Of course, most applications can easily avoid using scroll() or iterate() at all from the JTA or CMT code.)

If the Session throws an exception (including any SQLException), you should immediately rollback the database transaction, call Session.close() and discard the Session instance. Certain methods of Session will not leave the session in a consistent state. No exception thrown by Hibernate can be treated as recoverable. Ensure that the Session will be closed by calling close() in a finally block.

The HibernateException, which wraps most of the errors that can occur in a Hibernate persistence layer, is an unchecked exception (it wasn't in older versions of Hibernate). In our opinion, we shouldn't force the application developer to catch an unrecoverable exception at a low layer. In most systems, unchecked and fatal exceptions are handled in one of the first frames of the method call stack (i.e. in higher layers) and an error message is presented to the application user (or some other appropriate action is taken). Note that Hibernate might also throw other unchecked exceptions which are not a HibernateException. These are, again, not recoverable and appropriate action should be taken.

Hibernate wraps SQLExceptions thrown while interacting with the database in a JDBCException. In fact, Hibernate will attempt to convert the exception into a more meaningful subclass of JDBCException. The underlying SQLException is always available via JDBCException.getCause(). Hibernate converts the SQLException into an appropriate JDBCException subclass using the SQLExceptionConverter attached to the SessionFactory. By default, the SQLExceptionConverter is defined by the configured dialect; however, it is also possible to plug in a custom implementation (see the javadocs for the SQLExceptionConverterFactory class for details). The standard JDBCException subtypes are:

One extremely important feature provided by a managed environment like EJB that is never provided for non-managed code is transaction timeout. Transaction timeouts ensure that no misbehaving transaction can indefinitely tie up resources while returning no response to the user. Outside a managed (JTA) environment, Hibernate cannot fully provide this functionality. However, Hibernate can at least control data access operations, ensuring that database level deadlocks and queries with huge result sets are limited by a defined timeout. In a managed environment, Hibernate can delegate transaction timeout to JTA. This functionality is abstracted by the Hibernate Transaction object.

Session sess = factory.openSession();
try {
    //set transaction timeout to 3 seconds
    sess.getTransaction().setTimeout(3);
    sess.getTransaction().begin();

    // do some work
    ...

    sess.getTransaction().commit()
}
catch (RuntimeException e) {
    sess.getTransaction().rollback();
    throw e; // or display error message
}
finally {
    sess.close();
}

Note that setTimeout() may not be called in a CMT bean, where transaction timeouts must be defined declaratively.