I have a Container-Managed Transaction Session Bean, and I was hoping I wouldn't have to do beginTransaction, etc. but let the container handle that.

My insert isn't working (it behaves as if I was using JSP not calling beginTransaction) but there are no exceptions.

Is it possible to do this? If not, that's fine, but one of my coworkers said this might be possible.

I'm using the transaction setup in jboss-service.xml that comes from the Hibernate/JBoss intro.

This is most definietly possible. I do not know jboss, so I cannot speak to the specifics of its setup, but in general you simply need to point Hibernate at a datasource which is under the control of the TransactionManager managing the CMT transactions.

take a look at http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/reference/html/session-configuration.html#session-configuration-s4. Specifically the properties listed in Table 3.2

I seem to be doing that, according to the setup I'm using:

<server>
<mbean code="net.sf.hibernate.jmx.HibernateService" name="jboss.jca:service=HibernateFactory,
name=HibernateFactory">
<depends>jboss.jca:service=RARDeployer</depends>
<depends>jboss.jca:service=LocalTxCM,name=OracleDS</depends>
<!-- Make it deploy ONLY after DataSource had been started -->
<attribute name="MapResources">mappings/Modality.hbm.xml</attribute>
<attribute name="JndiName">java:/hibernate/HibernateFactory</attribute>
<attribute name="Datasource">java:/OracleDS</attribute>
<attribute name="Dialect">net.sf.hibernate.dialect.OracleDialect</attribute>
<attribute name="TransactionStrategy">net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JTATransactionFactory</attribute>
<attribute name="TransactionManagerLookupStrategy">net.sf.hibernate.transaction.JBossTransactionManagerLookup</attribute>
<attribute name="UseOuterJoin">false</attribute>
<attribute name="ShowSql">true</attribute>
<attribute name="UserTransactionName">UserTransaction</attribute>
</mbean>
</server>

Perhaps I just need to flush the session? Here's my code for getting the session:

package com.cti.resource;

import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.naming.NamingException;

import net.sf.hibernate.HibernateException;
import net.sf.hibernate.Session;
import net.sf.hibernate.SessionFactory;

public class HibernateUtil {

private static final String jndiName = "java:/hibernate/HibernateFactory";

private static final SessionFactory sessionFactory;

static {
try {
sessionFactory = (SessionFactory) new InitialContext().lookup(jndiName);
} catch (NamingException ex) {
throw new RuntimeException("Exception building SessionFactory: " + ex.getMessage(), ex);
}
}

public static final ThreadLocal session = new ThreadLocal();

public static Session currentSession() throws HibernateException {
Session s = (Session) session.get();
// Open a new Session, if this Thread has none yet
if (s == null) {
s = sessionFactory.openSession();
session.set(s);
}
return s;
}

public static void closeSession() throws HibernateException {
Session s = (Session) session.get();
session.set(null);
if (s != null)
s.close();
}
}

Yes, you need to flush the session manually in a CMT environment.