Transaction timeout precedence in JBoss EAP

Environment

• Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (EAP)
  • 7
  • 6
  • 5
• JBoss Transactions
• JBoss EJB3
  • @TransactionTimeout() annotation
• This content is not included.EAP 5 Datasource Parameters / This content is not included.EAP 6 Datasource Parameters
  • set-tx-query-timeout
  • query-timeout
  • xa-resource-timeout
• This content is not included.EAP 5 Transaction Timeout Handling / This content is not included.EAP 6 Transaction Timeout Handling
  • This content is not included.Transaction Timeouts
    • com.arjuna.ats.jts.defaultTimeout
    • com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.txReaperTimeout

Issue

• What timeouts can affect a transaction?
• What can cause a timeout?
• Is there a transaction timeout defined in the transaction manager

Resolution

There is no precedence or hierarchy in timeouts relating to a transaction. The smallest value in scope will cause a timeout. Typically the smallest value would be query-timeout.

Timeouts can be caused by network latency, external systems response time, failure of external systems and broken communication channels.

Driver Level

• Content from docs.oracle.com is not included.Statement Timeout set on the java.sql.Statement
  • Called by setting the following, but result of call is dependent upon driver implementation
    • If the datasource parameter set-tx-query-timeout is true then query timeout will be based on the time remaining until transaction timeout.

Resource Manager (RM)

• Content from docs.oracle.com is not included.TransactionTimeout set on the javax.transaction.xa.XAResource
  • last invocation on the XAResource wins
  • possibly out of scope due to dependency on RM settings (such as a participating database)

Transaction Service (TS)

• com.arjuna uses the following to setRollbackOnly on the javax.transaction.xa.XAResource
  • com.arjuna.ats.jts.defaultTimeout
    • Content from docs.oracle.com is not included.TransactionTimeout set on the javax.transaction.xa.XAResource
      • last invocation on the XAResource wins
  • com.arjuna.ats.arjuna.coordinator.txReaperTimeout
    • used by the com.arjuna TS in order to set a transaction to RollbackOnly
    • modified in jbossts-properties.xml
• See Transaction abort and timeout messages for recommendations regarding transaction timeout configuration (per-transaction and global).

Network & Database Server Level

• External (e.g. firewall or database server) timeout policy may interrupt/abort activity on connections which may lead to transaction failure
• A database server initiated timeout of transactions may also impact transaction behavior
• Noted for reference, out of scope for discussion

Diagnostic Steps

The Byteman rule below can be used to trace cases where statement timeout is set:

RULE java.sql.Statement.
INTERFACE java.sql.Statement
METHOD setQueryTimeout
IF TRUE
DO traceStack("[BMAN] Statement.setQueryTimeout(" + $1 + ")\n");
ENDRULE

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