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🚫 Stop Using Spring Boot @Transactional Everywhere: Understand When You Actually Need It
In Spring Boot applications, the @Transactional annotation is a powerful feature that helps manage transactions in a declarative way. However, many developers use it blindly — on every service method, on repository classes, and sometimes even on controllers — without understanding what it actually does or when it’s required.
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Using @Transactional everywhere can cause performance issues, hidden bugs, or simply add unnecessary overhead.
This article will explain:
- What
@Transactionalactually does - What Spring Data JPA does for you automatically
- When you should use
@Transactionalexplicitly — and when you don’t need it - Best practices for keeping your transaction management clean and clear
What Does @Transactional Do?
When you annotate a method or class with @Transactional, Spring wraps it in a proxy that manages the transaction lifecycle for you. Specifically, it:
- Starts a transaction before the method executes
- Commits the transaction if it completes successfully
- Rolls back the transaction if a runtime exception occurs
Example:
@Transactional
public void createUser(User user) {
userRepository.save(user);
auditService.record("User created");
}This method will run within a single transaction. If auditService.record() fails with a runtime exception, the transaction will roll back and the user won’t be saved.
