Enterprise JavaBeans, Second Edition

Chapter 8. Transactions

ACID Transactions

To understand how transactions work, we will revisit the TravelAgent bean, a stateful session bean that encapsulates the process of making a cruise reservation for a customer. Here is the TravelAgent’s bookPassage() method:

public Ticket bookPassage(CreditCard card, double price)
    throws IncompleteConversationalState {
    // EJB 1.0: also throws RemoteException
                
    if (customer == null || cruise == null || cabin == null){
        throw new IncompleteConversationalState();
    }
    try {
        ReservationHome resHome =
            (ReservationHome) getHome("ReservationHome",ReservationHome.class);
        Reservation reservation =
        resHome.create(customer, cruise, cabin, price);
        ProcessPaymentHome ppHome = (ProcessPaymentHome)
            getHome("ProcessPaymentHome",ProcessPaymentHome.class);
        ProcessPayment process = ppHome.create();
        process.byCredit(customer, card, price);

        Ticket ticket = new Ticket(customer,cruise,cabin,price);
        return ticket;
    } catch(Exception e) {
        // EJB 1.0: throw new RemoteException("",e);
        throw new EJBException(e);
    }
}

The TravelAgent bean is a fairly simple session bean, and its use of other beans is a typical example of business object design and workflow. Unfortunately, good business object design is not enough to make these beans useful in an industrial-strength application. The problem is not with the definition of the beans or the workflow; the problem is that a good design doesn’t, in and of itself, guarantee that the TravelAgent’s bookPassage() method represents a good ...