Running a Spring Batch step in a single transaction

Question

I am writing a Spring Batch job to:

Read some records from a database table
Write them to a file
Update the same records on the same database table

My solution so far involves:

A JdbcCursorItemReader which reads from the database
A CompositeItemWriter which, in turn, delegates to
- An ItemWriter to write to a file
- A JdbcBatchItemWriter to update the processed records on the database

How can I make sure that the whole step runs in a single transaction? I would be able to commit the database UPDATE only if the step is successful.

Here is the relevant Java-based configuration code:

@Bean
public Step step1() {
    return stepBuilderFactory.get("step1")
            .<Person, Person>chunk(...)
            .reader(...)
            .processor(...)
            .writer(compositeWriter())
            .build();
}

@Bean
public CompositeItemWriter<Person> compositeWriter() {
    return new CompositeItemWriterBuilder<Person>()
            .delegates(..., jdbcWriter())
            .build();
}

@Bean
public JdbcBatchItemWriter<Person> jdbcWriter(DataSource dataSource) {
    return new JdbcBatchItemWriterBuilder<Person>()
        .itemSqlParameterSourceProvider(...)
        .sql("UPDATE ...")
        .dataSource(dataSource)
        .build();
}

Maybe this will be to some help: baeldung.com/transaction-configuration-with-jpa-and-spring — Roar S.
Then why bother with Spring Batch in the first place? As trying to run this in 1 transaction is basically defeating the purpose of using Spring Batch in the first place. — M. Deinum

Mahmoud Ben Hassine Mahmoud Ben Hassine · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-08T12:59:02

Running the entire step in a single transaction is not the purpose of the chunk-oriented processing model in the first place. The reason is obviously related long running transactions when dealing with large volumes of data.

That said, nothing prevents you from creating a custom step implementation that does the work in a single transaction if this works for you, even though I would not recommend that.

Running a Spring Batch step in a single transaction

1 Answers