Serialization of HibernateTransactionManager fails [SPR-4662]

[spring-projects-issues]

Naaman Lifshitz opened SPR-4662 and commented

The HibernateTransactionManager class is Serializable (via its super-class), but holds a non-transient reference to a DefaultListableBeanFactory instance, which is not Serializable. As a result, when trying to serialize objects proxied for transactions, a NotSerializableException is thrown. (It also holds a non-transient reference to a DataSource).

From the source-code as well as from the javadocs, I understand that the TransactionInterceptor class was designed for serialization (as well as proxies in general) . However, in its writeObject method it attempts to serialize the transactionManager as is, which in the case of the HibernateTransactionManager, throws the exception.

This seems to me like a bug. The implication of the problem is that it is impossible to deploy in a cluster that employs session-replication. However, since there is a workaround I prioritize this as - Minor.

This is a workaround:

public class SerializableHibernateTransactionManager extends HibernateTransactionManager
implements ApplicationContextAware
{
private static ApplicationContext applicationContext;

private Object writeReplace() throws ObjectStreamException
{
    logger.debug("<serialized>");
    
    /*
     * null the non-transient references to these non-serializable objects
     * before serialization (so that serialization does not fail).
     */
    super.setBeanFactory(null);
    super.setDataSource(null);

    return this;
}

private Object readResolve() throws ObjectStreamException
{
    logger.debug("<deserialized>");

    /*
     * discard the de-serialized object, since it is missing the beanFactory and dataSource,
     * and obtain the bean from Spring, and return it instead. This is ok, since it is stateless.
     */
    return BeanFactoryUtils.beanOfTypeIncludingAncestors(applicationContext, HibernateTransactionManager.class);
}

public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext)
{
    SerializableHibernateTransactionManager.applicationContext = applicationContext;
}

}

---

Affects: 2.5 final

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

This is generally considered as known limitation rather than as bug. We will revisit serializability of Spring-managed resource references as well as of native transaction managers in the Spring 3.0 timeframe.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

kusuman commented

Hi,
I have implemented the solution proposed by Naaman, but still I getting one more error while I am serializing.

It goes like this

java.lang.RuntimeException: Serialization error. Path to bad object: [com.xyz.cic.bo.report.AutomatedReportDispatcherImpl@132a60, org.springframework.aop.framework.JdkDynamicAopProxy@728b447, org.springframework.aop.framework.ProxyFactory: 2 interfaces [com.xyz.cic.bo.report.AutomatedReportDispatcher, java.io.Serializable]; 1 advisors [org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.BeanFactoryTransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor: advice bean 'org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor#0']; targetSource [SingletonTargetSource for target object [com.edfenergy.cic.bo.report.AutomatedReportDispatcherImpl@132a60]]; proxyTargetClass=false; optimize=false; opaque=false; exposeProxy=false; frozen=false, [Lorg.springframework.aop.Advisor;@2109e3, org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.BeanFactoryTransactionAttributeSourceAdvisor: advice bean 'org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionInterceptor#0', java.lang.Object@11dbed]

is there something else that needs to be done?

Thanks
kusuman

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

This should be addressed through #6812 now... A DefaultListableBeanFactory is now serializable when running in an ApplicationContext. Alternatively, consider defining an aop:scoped-proxy element on your transaction manager bean, which as of Spring 3.0 RC1 will lead to serialization of a bean reference only (i.e. not of the full HibernateTransactionManager instance).

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Nikolai Holub commented

Had the same issue with Spring 2.0.8 after deployment to clustered environment.
Solution was to eliminate serialization of Spring transactional beans. More about this http://blog.nholub.com/2009/07/spring-transactions-and-serialization.html.