SetRollbackOnly throws TransactionRolledbackException

Hi all,

A coworker has discovered an interesting behavior in WebSphere
Application Server. The situation is that one stateless session bean
(Bean A) calls the remote method of another stateless session bean (Bean
B). Both are using CMT and all methods involved a transaction attribute
of Required. When setRollbackOnly is called from Bean A the method
returns to the caller without throwing an exception. However when Bean B
calls setRollbackOnly, the call to Bean B throws
TransactionRolledbackException.

The EJB spec doesn't appear to handle this explicitly. I found the
following which would apply:


          17.6.2.8 Handling of setRollbackOnly Method

    The container must handle the EJBContext.setRollbackOnly method
    invoked from a business method executing with the Required,
    RequiresNew, or Mandatory transaction attribute as follows:

        * The container must ensure that the transaction will never
          commit. Typically, the container instructs the transaction
          manager to mark the transaction for rollback.
        * If the container initiated the transaction immediately before
          dispatching the business method to the instance (as opposed to
          the transaction being inherited from the caller), the
          container must note that the instance has invoked the
          setRollbackOnly method. When the business method invocation
          completes, the container must roll back rather than commit the
          transaction. If the business method has returned normally or
          with an application exception, the container must pass the
          method result or the application exception to the client after
          the container performed the rollback.

This would indicate that having an exception thrown when the
setRollbackOnly is in a nested call is OK. However, I have a hard time
believing this since one of the benefits of EJBs is location independence.

And just to be contrary the following from *Section 18.3.9* appears to
say the an exception can never be thrown by a method were
setRollbackOnly was invoked.

    However, the container should not throw the java.rmi.RemoteException
    or javax.ejb.EJBException if the container performs a transaction
    rollback because the instance has invoked the setRollbackOnly method
    on its EJBContext object. In this case, the container must rollback
    the transaction and pass the business method result or the
    application exception thrown by the business method to the client.

WAS Support seems to believe that this doesn't apply to the situation
I've mentioned above. Their rational is that the container isn't
throwing the TRBE but the client "container" is throwing the TRBE. Talk
about splitting hairs.

Has anyone else seen this behavior before? Does anyone have an opinion
as to what's intended by the spec?

Thanks,

Victor Langelo



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