Spring Batch: Do I need a Transactional annotation? - spring-batch

Question

I have a Spring Batch app that I've configured with a SkipPolicy so the whole batch won't fail if one record can't be inserted. But the behavior doesn't seem to be that way. When an insert into the database fails, Postgresql says the transaction is "bad", and all commands will aborted. So all the following inserts into the db fail too. Spring is supposed to retry the transaction one record at a time, I thought?
So we're wondering if the problem is because we mark the service method with #Transactional? Should I just let Spring Batch control the transactions? Here's my job configuration:
<bean id="stepScope" class="org.springframework.batch.core.scope.StepScope">
<property name="autoProxy" value="true"/>
</bean>
<bean id="skipPolicy" class="com.company.batch.common.job.listener.BatchSkipPolicy"/>
<bean id="chunkListener" class="com.company.batch.common.job.listener.ChunkExecutionListener"/>
<batch:job id="capBkdnJob">
<batch:step id="capStep">
<tasklet throttle-limit="20">
<chunk reader="CapReader" processor="CapProcessor" writer="CapWriter" commit-interval="50"
skip-policy="skipPolicy" skip-limit="10">
<batch:skippable-exception-classes>
<batch:include class="com.company.common.exception.ERDException"/>
</batch:skippable-exception-classes>
</chunk>
<batch:no-rollback-exception-classes>
<batch:include class="com.company.common.exception.ERDException"/>
</batch:no-rollback-exception-classes>
<batch:listeners>
<batch:listener ref="chunkListener"/>
</batch:listeners>
</tasklet>
</batch:step>
<batch:listeners>
<batch:listener ref="batchWorkerJobExecutionListener"/>
</batch:listeners>
</batch:job>

Answer 1

Short answer is: no
Spring Batch will use the transaction manager defined as part of your JobRepository by default. This will allow it to roll back the whole chunk when an error has been encountered and then retry each item individually in its own transaction.