3.5. Transaction Association

Transactions are associated with a transactional resource via the start method, and dissociated from the resource via the end method. The resource adapter internally maintains an association between the resource connection object and the XAResource object. At any given time, a connection is associated with zero or one transactions. Because JTA does not support nested transactions, the start method cannot be invoked on a connection that is currently associated with a different transaction.

The transaction manager may interleave multiple transaction contexts with the same resource, as long as start and end are invoked properly for each transaction context switch. Each time the resource is used with a different transaction, the end method must be invoked for the previous transaction that was associated with the resource, and the start method must be invoked for the current transaction context.