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<document>
 <properties>
   <title>Torque ORM Reference - Reading from the database</title>
   <author email="fischer@seitenbau.de">Thomas Fischer</author>
 </properties>

 <body>

  <section name="Connection and Transaction Handling">
    <p>
      To read data from  or write data to the database, a connection to the
      database is required. To be able to connect to a database,
      you need to add the relevant information to Torque's configuration, 
      see the section about 
      <a href="initialisation-configuration.html">initialisation and configuration</a>.
    </p>
    
    <p>
      Connection and Transaction handling cannot be treated separately
      from each other. Some databases, e.g. oracle, may automatically start
      a transaction on an sql command, so you might not be able to
      get a database connection without a transaction. Then, transactions live
      in database connections, so it is not possible to get a transaction
      without a database connection.
    </p>
    
    <p>
      There are two ways of connection and transaction handling:
      <ul>
        <li>Let Torque take care of it.</li>
        <li>Do it yourself.</li>
      </ul>
      Unless you know what you are doing, the first approach is recommended.
      If you choose the second approach and write incorrect code, this may lead
      to connection leaks and/or blocked connections.  You have been warned.
    </p>
  </section>

  <section name="Torque's Connection and Transaction Handling">

    <p>
      When you use Torque, you need not bother about connections and 
      transactions.  The only thing you have to do is to configure Torque 
      correctly, then Torque is able to create a database connection whenever
      it needs one.  For example, if you call the save() method of some object,
      Torque retrieves a connection from its internal connection pool, 
      uses it to save the connection, and returns it to the pool. 
    </p>
    
    <p>
      If the database supports transactions and autocommit is turned off,
      one Transaction is used for every method which needs a database 
      connection. See the source code for details.
    </p>

  </section>
  
  <section name="Handle Connections and Transactions yourself">

    <p>
      If you want to manipulate the database in some way which is not
      incorporated into Torque, or want to execute several commands in one
      transaction, you need to handle connections and transaction 
      yourself.  This is potentially dangerous, as incorrect handling of
      connections and transaction may lead to connection leaks 
      (resulting in errors because no more connections can be opened to the 
      database) or blocked connections (because some transaction has been 
      left open).  Typically, these conditions appear if a database operation
      fails, because error handling is insufficient.
    </p>
    
    <p>
      The following code is recommended if you need to handle connections 
      and/or transactions yourself:
    </p>

<source>
Connection connection = null;
try
{
    connection = Transaction.begin();

    // do something with connection, e.g.
    // someObject.save(connection);

    Transaction.commit(connection);
    connection = null;
}
finally
{
    if (connection != null)
    {
        Transaction.safeRollback(connection);
    }
}
</source>

    <p>
      This code ensures that if any error occurs within the try block,
      an attempt is made to rollback the transaction and return it into the
      pool.
    </p>

    <p>
      If the database supports transactions and autocommit is turned off,
      all database operations are executed in a single transaction. 
      This has the following effect: For example, you execute two saves in the
      try block, and the second save fails. The first save operation will be
      rolled back, i.e. the database reverts the changes made by the first save.
      If you do not like this behavior, the safe way is to wrap everything in 
      its own try ... finally block.
    </p>
    
    <p>
      If you use more than one database, you might want to use 
      <code>Transaction.begin(String databaseName)</code> instead of
      <code>Transaction.begin()</code>.
    </p>
    
    <p>
      The following code is <em>NOT</em> recommended, as some databases
      (like Oracle) start transactions automatically, and some pools 
      (like dbcp, Torque's default pool) do not rollback automatically if
      a connection is returned to the pool.  So under certain conditions,
      you might have leftovers from the last transaction in a "fresh" 
      connection from the pool, or, even worse, the connection blocks 
      because the pool attempts to set some transaction property which 
      needs to be set as first command in a transaction.
    </p>

<source>
Connection connection = null;
try
{
    // Bad ! No defined transaction state afterwards !
    connection = Torque.getConnection();

    // do something with connection, e.g.
    // someObject.save(connection);

    Transaction.commit(connection);
    connection = null;
}
finally
{
    if (connection != null)
    {
        // Bad ! No rollback or commit !
        Torque.closeConnection(connection);
    }
}
</source>

  </section>

  <section name="Supplying your own Transaction Manager">
    
    <p>
      In some situations, e.g. if you use external transaction control from
      another framework, it is not desirable that Torque attempts to
      manipulate transaction state. If this is the case, you can configure
      Torque to use another transaction manager by implementing a 
      org.apache.torque.util.TransactionManager, and then use the 
      <code>Transaction.setTransactionManager()</code> method at
      application startup time to tell Torque to use your own TransactionManager
      instead of the built-in one.
    </p>

    <p>
      Note that transaction management errors typically occur only under load
      and are difficult to find, so use this only if you know what you are
      doing. 
    </p>
  </section>
 </body>
</document>
