A Spring Transaction is a process of managing the consistency and integrity of data during a database operation, which could be an insert, update, or delete, as it is being executed. In other words, Spring Transactions are a way of ensuring that database operations occur as a whole or not at all, known as the ACID principle (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability).
Spring Transactions can be managed in two ways: programmatic and declarative. Programmatic transactions are when transactions are managed by the developer within the code using Spring’s TransactionTemplate or TransactionCallback interfaces. Declarative transactions, on the other hand, use metadata, such as annotations, to define the transactional aspects of a method or class.
The PlatformTransactionManager is an interface in the Spring Framework that provides an abstraction layer between the developer and the underlying transaction management system. It acts as a central source of control for transactional operations in Spring Applications. The PlatformTransactionManager interface defines a set of methods that are used to manage transactions within the application, such as beginning, committing, and rolling back transactions.
The PlatformTransactionManager interface has many implementations, including HibernateTransactionManager, JpaTransactionManager, and DataSourceTransactionManager, to name a few. Which implementation to use depends on the transaction management system used by the application.
For example, if the application is using Hibernate as the ORM framework, then the HibernateTransactionManager can be used to manage transactions. If the application is using JPA, then the JpaTransactionManager can be used. If plain JDBC is being used, then DataSourceTransactionManager can be used.
In summary, Spring Transactions are a way of ensuring consistency and integrity of data during a database operation, and the PlatformTransactionManager acts as an interface between the developer and the underlying transaction management system by providing a set of methods to manage transactions.