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<h2>Overview</h2>

The Unit Of Work pattern is a common pattern in enterprise application architectures.

It can be used for implementing:
<ul>
	<li>transparent persistence</li>
	<li>replication</li>
	<li>clustering/caching</li>
	<li>transaction demarcation</li>
	<li>etc.</li>
</ul>

It implements the concept of an &quot;application transaction&quot; that keeps track of:
<ul>
	<li>dirty objects</li>
	<li>new objects</li>
	<li>removed objects</li>
</ul>

It records the state of the objects, by tracking field changes, as it is before the transaction is started and will then rollback the state in memory upon rollback of the transaction. It allows adding additional behavior at commit, rollback etc., for example store all new, update all dirty and remove all removed objects in a persistent storage.

Fowler defines the Unit Of Work pattern like this in his book <a href="http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/unitOfWork.html">Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture</a>:
<blockquote>&quot;Maintains a list of objects affected by a business transaction and coordinates the writing out of changes and the resolution of concurrency problems.&quot;</blockquote>

This implementation implements the following transaction semantics:
<ul>
	<li>TX SUPPORTS</li>
	<li>TX MANDATORY</li>
	<li>TX NEVER</li>
	<li>TX REQUIRES</li>
	<li>TX REQUIRES NEW</li>
</ul>

<h2>UnitOfWorkListener</h2>

The user can implement listeners that allows him to trigger additional behaviour on specific events, such as begin, commit, rollback, dispose etc.

All listeners must implement that <code>org.codehaus.aware.unitofwork.UnitOfWorkListener</code> interface.

The Unit Of Work will not commit until all listeners have agreed on that. If for example on listener have set the transaction to rollBackOnly then the whole Unit Of Work transaction will rollback.

<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" data-macro-default-parameter="java" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGU6amF2YX0&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
public interface UnitOfWorkListener {
 /**
 * Initializes the UnitOfWork listener by passing in the UnitOfWork for this listener.
 *
 * @param unitOfWork the UnitOfWork instance
 */
 void initialize(UnitOfWork unitOfWork);

/**
     * Checks if the UnitOfWork is set to rollback only
     *
     * @return boolean
     */
    boolean isRollbackOnly();

/**
     * Is invoked when the UnitOfWork is started.
     */
    void doBegin();

/**
     * Is invoked when the UnitOfWork is committed.
     */
    void doCommit();

/**
     * Is invoked right before the UnitOfWork is committed.
     */
    void doPreCommit();

/**
     * Is invoked right after the UnitOfWork is committed.
     */
    void doPostCommit();

/**
     * Is invoked when the UnitOfWork is aborted.
     */
    void doRollback();

/**
     * Is invoked when the UnitOfWork is aborted.
     */
    void doDispose();

/**
     * Adds an object to the ID map.
     *
     * @param obj the object to add to the ID map
     */
    void addToIdMap(Object obj);

/**
 * Removes an object from the ID map.
 *
 * @param obj the object to remove from the ID map
 */
 void removeFromIdMap(Object obj);
}
</pre></td></tr></table>

We also provide a convenience abstract adapter class that you can use if you are only interested in implementing a couple of methods and don't want to have empty method definitions. Just extend the <code>org.codehaus.aware.unitofwork.UnitOfWorkAdapter</code> class.

<h2>Definition</h2>

The listeners are added to the Unit Of Work in the <code>initialize</code> method:

<table class="wysiwyg-macro" data-macro-name="code" data-macro-default-parameter="java" style="background-image: url(/plugins/servlet/confluence/placeholder/macro-heading?definition=e2NvZGU6amF2YX0&amp;locale=en_GB&amp;version=2); background-repeat: no-repeat;" data-macro-body-type="PLAIN_TEXT"><tr><td class="wysiwyg-macro-body"><pre>
UnitOfWork.initialize(new Class[]{HibernateUnitOfWorkListener.class, JtaUnitOfWorkListener.class});
</pre></td></tr></table>

But in practice it is usually best to define this information outside the code, in a configuration file. Such as in the <a class="confluence-link" href="/display/AWARE/HibernateUnitOfWorkListener" data-linked-resource-id="3420" data-linked-resource-type="page" data-linked-resource-default-alias="HibernateUnitOfWorkListener" data-base-url="http://docs.codehaus.org">HibernateUnitOfWorkListener</a> implementation, which uses the <a class="confluence-link" href="/display/AWARE/SpringAspectContainer" data-linked-resource-id="3419" data-linked-resource-type="page" data-linked-resource-default-alias="SpringAspectContainer" data-base-url="http://docs.codehaus.org">SpringAspectContainer</a> to configure the UnitOfWork.