I am researching alternatives to database-level pessimistic locking to achieve transaction isolation in a cluster of Java applications going against the same database. Synchronizing concurrent access in the application tier is clearly not a solution in the present configuration because the same database transaction can be invoked from multiple JVMs concurrently. Currently, we are subject to occasional race conditions which, due to the optimistic locking we have in place via Hibernate, cause a StaleObjectStateException exception and data loss.

I have a moderately large transaction within the scope of my refactoring project. Let's describe it as updating one top-level table row and then making various related inserts and/or updates to several of its child entities. I would like to insure exclusive access to the top-level table row and all of the children to be affected but I would like to stay away from pessimistic locking at the database level for performance reasons mostly. We use Hibernate for ORM.

Does it make sense to start a single (perhaps synchronous) message queue application into which this method could be moved to insure synchronized access as opposed to each cluster node using its own, which is a clear race condition hazard? I am mentioning this approach even though I am not confident in it because both the top-level table row and its children could also be updated from other system calls, not just the mentioned transaction. So I am seeking to design a solution where the top-level table row and its children will all somehow be pseudo-locked (exclusive transaction isolation) but at the application and not the database level.

I am open to ideas and suggestions, I understand this is not a very cut and dried challenge.