Question

Suppose you use JPA with Spring, with Hibernate as JPA implementation.
JPA transaction mode is “JTA”, so you need to pass the container transactionManager to Hibernate.
The classical answer is to set hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class to the matching class for your server.

However, I think it’s a shame to have this depend of server specific configuration as you already found the transactionManager in Spring with <tx:jta-transaction-manager>.

Is there a way to give this transactionManager to Hibernate with a configuration like

 <bean id="entityManagerFactory"
  class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
  <property name="persistenceUnitName" value="persistence_unit_name"/>
  <property name="jpaVendorAdapter">
   <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter"/>
  </property>
  <property name="jpaProperties">
   <props>
    <prop key="hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class">
     org.hibernate.transaction.SunONETransactionManagerLookup
    </prop>
   </props>
  </property>
 </bean>

 <tx:jta-transaction-manager/>

The goal is to get rid of the org.hibernate.transaction.SunONETransactionManagerLookup property.
By the way, I really have two different server implementations in mind.

EDIT : without the transaction manager configuration, Hibernate chokes when creating the EntityManagerFactory :

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'entityManagerFactory' defined in URL [file:/C:/configuration/afoCuad-metier-ear/entitymanager-base-context.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is javax.persistence.PersistenceException: [PersistenceUnit: fr.tm.ima.cuad-afoCuad-metier-ejb-PU] Unable to build EntityManagerFactory
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1420)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:519)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:456)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:291)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:288)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:190)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.findDefaultEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:529)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.findEntityManagerFactory(PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:495)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor$PersistenceElement.resolveEntityManager(PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:656)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor$PersistenceElement.getResourceToInject(PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:629)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.InjectionMetadata$InjectedElement.inject(InjectionMetadata.java:147)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.InjectionMetadata.inject(InjectionMetadata.java:84)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.postProcessPropertyValues(PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:338)
... 80 more
Caused by: javax.persistence.PersistenceException: [PersistenceUnit: fr.tm.ima.cuad-afoCuad-metier-ejb-PU] Unable to build EntityManagerFactory
at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.buildEntityManagerFactory(Ejb3Configuration.java:901)
at org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(HibernatePersistence.java:74)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:225)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:308)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1477)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1417)
... 93 more
Caused by: org.hibernate.HibernateException: The chosen transaction strategy requires access to the JTA TransactionManager
at org.hibernate.impl.SessionFactoryImpl.<init>(SessionFactoryImpl.java:401)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1385)
at org.hibernate.cfg.AnnotationConfiguration.buildSessionFactory(AnnotationConfiguration.java:954)
at org.hibernate.ejb.Ejb3Configuration.buildEntityManagerFactory(Ejb3Configuration.java:892)
... 98 more

Answer 1

Unfortunately if one looks at the Hibernate APIs like many other JBoss products they have a a class typically called Configuration to hold most if not all the main config stuff. Unfortunately they (JBoss) seem to like to hold “Strings” for parameters and class to locate instances. Almost always its often impossible to simply set an actual premade ready to go setup.

I am about to try something similar to the following for the very same reason you are mentioning.

• Create an implementation of TransactionManagerLookup
• include a setter which takes a TM and sets a thread local variable + instance.
• pass the name of TML inside the properties you pass to the Configuration.
• When Your TML startsup copy the thread local variable to your instance fie.d.
• clear the threadlocal once everything is done.