jBPM + Spring transactions sharing and scope

Question

I've inherited an app using jBPM and Spring and am trying to figure out if it is configured the way it should be.

First question: Does jBPM span a single JTA (JDBC and/or Hibernate) transaction across multiple actions in the same transition by default? If not, can it be configured to? So in the example below is there a way to span a transaction across Action1 and Action2.

jBPM actions in this project retrieve services or DAOs (JDBC) from Spring context. For the configuration described below, are jBPM actions and the service / DAO methods they invoke encapsulated in one transaction? DAO and service methods are annotated with @Transactional themselves.

State definition:

<state name="SomeState">
    <event type="node-enter">
    <action class="SomeAction"/>
    </event>
    <transition name="transition1" to="finish">
    <action class="Action1"/>
    <action class="Action2"/>
    </transition>
    <transition name="transition.stop" to="finish"/>
</state>

My jBPM config:

<jbpm-configuration>

    <jbpm-context>
        <!--<service name="persistence" factory="org.jbpm.persistence.db.DbPersistenceServiceFactory" />-->
    <service name="persistence">
        <factory>
            <bean class="org.jbpm.persistence.jta.JtaDbPersistenceServiceFactory">
                <field name="isTransactionEnabled">
                    <false />
                </field>
            </bean>
        </factory>
    </service>
    <service name="tx" factory="org.jbpm.tx.TxServiceFactory" />
    <service name="message" factory="org.jbpm.msg.db.DbMessageServiceFactory" />
    <service name="scheduler" factory="org.jbpm.scheduler.db.DbSchedulerServiceFactory" />
    <service name="logging" factory="org.jbpm.logging.db.DbLoggingServiceFactory" />
    <service name="authentication" factory="org.jbpm.security.authentication.DefaultAuthenticationServiceFactory" />
    </jbpm-context>

    <!-- configuration property used by persistence service impl org.jbpm.persistence.db.DbPersistenceServiceFactory -->
    <string name="resource.hibernate.cfg.xml" value="hibernate.jbpm.cfg.xml" />

    <!-- configuration resource files pointing to default configuration files in jbpm-{version}.jar -->
    <string name="resource.business.calendar" value="org/jbpm/calendar/jbpm.business.calendar.properties" />
    <string name="resource.default.modules" value="org/jbpm/graph/def/jbpm.default.modules.properties" />
    <string name="resource.converter" value="org/jbpm/db/hibernate/jbpm.converter.properties" />
    <string name="resource.action.types" value="org/jbpm/graph/action/action.types.xml" />
    <string name="resource.node.types" value="org/jbpm/graph/node/node.types.xml" />
    <string name="resource.parsers" value="org/jbpm/jpdl/par/jbpm.parsers.xml" />
    <string name="resource.varmapping" value="org/jbpm/context/exe/jbpm.varmapping.xml" />
    <string name="resource.mail.templates" value="jbpm.mail.templates.xml" />

    <int name="jbpm.byte.block.size" value="1024" singleton="true" />
    <bean name="jbpm.task.instance.factory" class="org.jbpm.taskmgmt.impl.DefaultTaskInstanceFactoryImpl" singleton="true" />
    <bean name="jbpm.variable.resolver" class="org.jbpm.jpdl.el.impl.JbpmVariableResolver" singleton="true" />
    <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.host" value="localhost" />
    <bean name="jbpm.mail.address.resolver" class="org.jbpm.identity.mail.IdentityAddressResolver" singleton="true" />
    <string name="jbpm.mail.from.address" value="jbpm@noreply" />

    <bean name="jbpm.job.executor" class="org.jbpm.job.executor.JobExecutor">
    <field name="jbpmConfiguration"><ref bean="jbpmConfiguration" /></field>
    <field name="name"><string value="JbpmJobExecutor" /></field>
    <field name="nbrOfThreads"><int value="1" /></field>
    <field name="idleInterval"><int value="5000" /></field>
    <field name="maxIdleInterval"><int value="3600000" /></field> <!-- 1 hour -->
    <field name="historyMaxSize"><int value="20" /></field>
    <field name="maxLockTime"><int value="600000" /></field> <!-- 10 minutes -->
    <field name="lockMonitorInterval"><int value="60000" /></field> <!-- 1 minute -->
    <field name="lockBufferTime"><int value="5000" /></field> <!-- 5 seconds -->
    </bean>

</jbpm-configuration>

Relevant spring config:

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.aop.framework.autoproxy.DefaultAdvisorAutoProxyCreator"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor">
    <property name="transactionInterceptor" ref="txInterceptor"/>
</bean>

<bean id="txInterceptor" class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor">
    <property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
    <property name="transactionAttributeSource">
    <bean class="org.springframework.transaction.annotation.AnnotationTransactionAttributeSource"/>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager"/>

Answer 1

I know it's a late reply (1 year old question), but maybe it will help others coming from Google or site search.

You haven't specified which version of JBPM you are using, so I'm assuming 4.x because 5 wasn't ready back then ;)

JBPM runs each command (task) in it's own transaction by default and uses it's own transaction manager for this job. So in order for it to use Spring, you have to make some changes to the jbpm.cfg.xml, namely inject <spring-transaction-interceptor /> and <hibernate-session current="true" />.

This blog post should help configure all of it, though: http://blog.aparnachaudhary.net/2010/08/19/jbpm4-4-with-spring3/