Guys,
as discussed during the call this morning, when retrieving a reference to the Hibernate session directly in DAO methods, like this
Session session = this.getSession();
you will quickly run into problems with connection leaks if you do not close this session afterwards. However, if the method where you access the session is wrapped in a transaction, you'll get an exception saying that the transaction failed, because the session was closed.
This can be fixed by adding the @Transactional configuration below to the DAO method as well. The Propagation.REQUIRED will force the getSession method to use any existing transaction that exists, or create a new one none exists.
@Transactional(propagation = Propagation.REQUIRED)
This means that when calling the DAO method from a service method which is already wrapped in a transaction, the getSession() call will re-use the existing, open transaction, but if you call the DAO method outside any existing transaction a new one will be created only for that method call.
Should you experience any issues with this approach, let us know - but from the testing I've done so far this works well.