I've got this web service that basically queries the database and returns all persisted entities. For testing purposes, I've created a TestDataManager that persists 2 example entities after Spring context is loaded (BTW, I'm using JAX-WS, Spring, Hibernate and HSQLDB).

My TestDataManager looks like this:

@Component
public class TestDataManager {

@Resource
private SessionFactory sf;

@PostConstruct
@Transactional(readOnly = false, propagation = Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW)
public void insertTestData(){
    sf.openSession();
    sf.openSession().beginTransaction();
    sf.openSession().persist(new Site("site one"));
    sf.openSession().persist(new Site("site two"));
    sf.openSession().flush();
}
}

My JAX-WS endpoint looks like this:

@WebService
public class SmartBrickEndpoint {

@Resource
private WebServiceContext context;

public Set<Site> getSitesForUser(String user){
    return getSiteService().findByUser(new User(user));
}

private ISiteService getSiteService(){
    ServletContext servletContext = (ServletContext) context.getMessageContext().get("javax.xml.ws.servlet.context");
    return (ISiteService) BeanRetriever.getBean(servletContext, ISiteService.class);
}
}

This my Service class:

@Component
@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class SiteService implements ISiteService {

@Resource
private ISiteDao siteDao;

@Override
public Set<Site> findByUser(User user) {
    return siteDao.findByUser(user);
}
}

This is my DAO:

@Component
@Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class SiteDao implements ISiteDao {

@Resource
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;

@Override
public Set<Site> findByUser(User user) {
    Set<Site> sites = new LinkedHashSet<Site>(sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().createCriteria(Site.class).list());

    return sites;
}
}

This is my applicationContext.xml:

<context:annotation-config />
<context:component-scan base-package="br.unirio.wsimxp.dao"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="br.unirio.wsimxp.service"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="br.unirio.wsimxp.spring"/>

<bean id="applicationDS" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver"/>
    <property name="url" value="jdbc:hsqldb:file:sites"/>
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory"
      class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="applicationDS" />

    <property name="configLocation">
        <value>classpath:hibernate.cfg.xml</value>
    </property>

    <property name="hibernateProperties">
        <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.HSQLDialect</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.format_sql">true</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.connection.release_mode">on_close</prop>
            <!--<prop key="hibernate.current_session_context_class">thread</prop>-->
            <prop key="hibernate.query.factory_class">org.hibernate.hql.classic.ClassicQueryTranslatorFactory</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">create-drop</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager" />

This is what's going on now:

1. when the app is deployed, TestDataManager#insertTestData kicks-in (due to @PostConstruct) and persist does not raise any exception. I should have 2 entities in the DB by now.
2. Afterwards, I invoke the endpoint by a SOAP client, and the request goes all the way up to the DAO. The Hibernate invocation does not raise any exception, but the returned list is empty.

The odd thing is, in TestDataManager, if I switch from sf.openSession() to sf.getCurrentSession(), I get an error message: "No Hibernate Session bound to thread, and configuration does not allow creation of non-transactional one here".

What I am doing wrong here? Why is the query "not seeing" the persisted entities? Why do I need to invoke sf.openSession() on TestDataManager although it's annotated with @Transactional?

I have done some tests with hibernate.current_session_context_class=thread in application.xml, but then I just switch problems in each class. I'd like not needing to manually invoke sf.openSession() and leave that for Hibernate to take care.

Thanks a lot for any help!