Why doesn't openSession work but getCurrentSession works in Spring Hibernate

Question

I have written a sample Spring Hibernate application o understand how Spring hibernate integration works.

Here is my applicationContext.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee" xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
    xmlns:task="http://www.springframework.org/schema/task"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.2.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.2.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee/spring-jee-3.2.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.2.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/task http://www.springframework.org/schema/task/spring-task-3.2.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.general" />

    <tx:annotation-driven />

    <bean id="dataSource"
        class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
        <property name="driverClassName" value="oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver" />
        <property name="url" value="jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:orcl" />
        <property name="username" value="system" />
        <property name="password" value="admin_123" />
    </bean>

    <bean id="sessionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean ">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"></property>
        <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.general"></property>
        <property name="hibernateProperties">
            <props>
                <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean id="transactionManager"
        class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
        <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"></property>
    </bean>
</beans>

Then, my service class is like that

package com.general;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;
import org.springframework.transaction.support.TransactionSynchronizationManager;
import org.hibernate.Session;
import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;


@Service("employeeService")
public class EmployeeServiceImpl implements EmployeeService{

    @Autowired
    private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

    public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
        this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
    }

    @Transactional
    public void saveEmployee(Employee emp) {
        Session session = sessionFactory.getCurrentSession();//.openSession();
        session.save(emp);
    }

}

And my main class is

public class App {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("load context");
        ConfigurableApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
        Employee em = new Employee();
        em.setId(1l);
        em.setName("John");

        EmployeeService emService = (EmployeeService) context.getBean("employeeService");
        emService.saveEmployee(em);
    }

}

If I run this application using getCurrentSession method, then it runs fine and employee is saved into the database but if i use openSession method, then no SQL query is fired and thus nothing is saved into the database.

I am not sure why this is happening. May be I don't have correct understanding of getCurrentSession () and openSession (). Can please someone let me know the reason behind it.

Answer 1

The fact that you have @Transactional on a method in a @Service annotated class along with a TransactionManager means the whole transaction lifecycle will be managed by Spring.

When your saveEmployee method is called, Spring will open a Session , start a transaction, execute your code, commit the transaction and close the Session . The Session it starts is bound to the current thread and available through getCurrentSession() .

If you instead use openSession() , you are opening a completely unrelated Session , not managed by Spring's TransactionManager . As such, the transaction won't be committed and the Session won't be closed unless you do it yourself.