Master Spring Transactions: Programming vs Declarative Approaches Explained

Spring transactions are a frequent interview topic in large tech companies. This article explains both programmatic and declarative transaction management in Spring.

Programmatic Transaction

Programmatic transactions are defined in code, allowing precise control over transaction boundaries. Spring offers TransactionTemplate and PlatformTransactionManager, with TransactionTemplate recommended.

@Autowired
private TransactionTemplate transactionTemplate;

public void testTransaction() {
    transactionTemplate.execute(new TransactionCallbackWithoutResult() {
        @Override
        protected void doInTransactionWithoutResult(TransactionStatus transactionStatus) {
            try {
                // ... business code
            } catch (Exception e) {
                transactionStatus.setRollbackOnly();
            }
        }
    });
}

Declarative Transaction

Declarative transactions use Spring AOP and the @Transactional annotation, requiring minimal code changes and keeping business logic free of transaction management code.

@Transactional
public void insert(String userName) {
    this.jdbcTemplate.update("insert into t_user (name) values (?)", userName);
}

The main advantage of declarative transactions is that business logic remains free of transaction‑management code.

Transaction Principles

Spring itself does not implement transactions; it relies on the underlying database’s transaction support. For plain JDBC, transaction steps include obtaining a connection, disabling auto‑commit, performing CRUD operations, committing or rolling back, and closing the connection.

Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(...);
con.setAutoCommit(false);
// execute CRUD operations
con.commit(); // or con.rollback();
con.close();

Spring abstracts these steps, allowing developers to focus on business logic while Spring handles the transaction lifecycle.