Use the transaction service

This topic is an overview of the tasks involved to use transactions with WebSphere Application Server applications.

Overview

WebSphere Application Server applications can use transactions to coordinate multiple updates to resources as atomic units (as indivisible units of work) such that all or none of the updates are made permanent. In WebSphere Application Server, transactions are managed by three main components:

• A transaction manager. The transaction manager supports the enlistment of recoverable XAResources and ensures that each such resource is driven to a consistent outcome, either at the end of a transaction, or after a failure and restart of the application server.

• A container in which the J2EE application runs. The container manages the enlistment of XAResources on behalf of the application when the application performs updates to transactional resource managers (for example, databases). Optionally, the container can control the demarcation of transactions for enterprise beans configured for container-managed transactions.

• An application programming interface, UserTransaction, that is available to bean-managed enterprise beans and servlets. These application components can use the UserTransaction interface to control the demarcation of their own transactions.

  For details about the methods available with the UserTransaction interface, see the Developer API documentation or the Java Transaction API (JTA) 1.0.1 Specification.

Use the following tasks to work with transactions in WebSphere Application Server applications:

Procedure

• Developing components to use transactions

• Configuring transaction properties for an application server

• Configuring transaction properties for peer recovery

• Managing manual peer recovery of the transaction service

• Managing active and prepared transactions

• Managing transaction logging for optimum server availability

• Interoperating transactionally between application servers

• Configuring Web Services Atomic Transaction support in a secure environment

• Configuring an intermediary node for Web services transactions

• Enabling WebSphere Application Server to use an intermediary node for Web services transactions

• Configuring a server to use business activity support

• Creating an application that uses the business activity support

• Troubleshooting transactions

• Using one-phase and two-phase commit resources in the same transaction

• Using the ActivitySession service

Related concepts

Related tasks