Atomikos vs JOTM vs Bitronix vs ????

I am new to JTA and it's underlying transaction managers. Can anyone explain the pros/cons of each of these? Feel free to add others I didn't list in title.

Standalone transaction managers I'm aware of include Bitronix, SimpleJTA, Tyrex (dead?), JOTM (used in Jonas), GeronimoTM/Jencks (used in Geronimo), JBossTS (used in JBoss) and Atomikos.

I've never tested them all extensively (and this is what you would have to do if you have to choose one) so I can't provide an exhaustive pros/cons (and that would require some work). But here are some links:

Transaction Manager for Stand-Alone Java Applications (cover some of them with pros/cons)
O(pen) S(ource) JTA Transaction Managers
Re: [xmlblaster-devel] JTA compliance

Just in case, here is my very personal point of view:

I've seen lots of complains about JOTM.
I think that GeronimoTM/Jencks lacks of documentation.
SimpleJTA doesn't implement JTS and is not active.
Bitronix is decently documentation but doesn't offer support.
Atomikos is an impressive product, well documented and does offer support.
JBossTS aka ArjunaTS is definitely a mature product (see the announcement of the acquisition for some history) and does offer support.

Personally, I'd shortlist Atomikos and JBossTS and test them hardcore if I had to choose one.

Also, don't the major applications servers (WebSphere, JBoss, Glassfish) have their own JTA compliant transaction manager?

Of course they do, JTA is part of the Java EE specification, a Java EE server has to support it.

In those environments, would you still use these third party implementations?

No, I'd use the provided transaction manager (for simplicity, support, etc).

Thank you for this helpful answer. Sometimes, for testing and demonstration purposes mostly, our application needs to run in Jetty or Tomcat. Will Atomikos and JBossTS still work in those environments?In fact, it that the reason for these third party transaction managers? To get good transaction support outside a full-fledged app server?

HDave 2010-06-05 01:08:35

@HDave: Standalone transaction managers are useful when you need global transactions support (i.e. when you are dealing with more than one transactional resource) and your environment doesn't offer support for this (e.g. a standalone application, a servlet container). In such environments, I'd use Spring to ease the configuration (and JBossTS and Atomikos would fit).

Pascal Thivent 2010-06-05 01:22:23

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Atomikos vs JOTM vs Bitronix vs ????

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