What is the difference between JTS and JTA?

     In any J2EE application transaction management is one of the most crucial requirements of the application. Given the complexity of today's business requirements, transaction processing occupies one of the most complex segments of enterprise level distributed applications to build, deploy and maintain. JTS specifies the implementation of a Java transaction manager. JTS specifies the implementation of a Transaction Manager which supports the Java Transaction API (JTA) 1.0 This transaction manager supports the JTA, using which application servers can be built to support transactional Java applications. Internally the JTS implements the Java mapping of the OMG OTS 1.1 specifications. The Java mapping is specified in two packages: org.omg.CosTransactions and org.omg.CosTSPortability. The JTS thus provides a new architecture for transactional application servers and applications, while complying to the OMG OTS 1.1 interfaces internally. This allows the JTA compliant applications to interoperate with other OTS 1.1 complaint applications through the standard IIOP. Java-based applications and Java-based application servers access transaction management functionality via the JTA interfaces. The JTA interacts with a transaction management implementation via JTS. Similarly, the JTS can access resources via the JTA XA interfaces or can access OTS-enabled non-XA resources. JTS implementations can interoperate via CORBA OTS interfaces.

      The JTA specifies an architecture for building transactional application servers and defines a set of interfaces for various components of this architecture. The components are: the application, resource managers, and the application server. The JTA specifies standard interfaces for Java-based applications and application servers to interact with transactions, transaction managers, and resource managers JTA transaction management provides a set of interfaces utilized by an application server to manage the beginning and completion of transactions. Transaction synchronization and propagation services are also provided under the domain of transaction management.

      In the Java transaction model, the Java application components can conduct transactional operations on JTA compliant resources via the JTS. The JTS acts as a layer over the OTS. The applications can therefore initiate global transactions to include other OTS transaction managers, or participate in global transactions initiated by other OTS compliant transaction managers.