Note that isolation level and timeout settings will not get applied unless an actual new transaction gets started. As only PROPAGATION_REQUIRED , PROPAGATION_REQUIRES_NEW and PROPAGATION_NESTED can cause that, it usually doesn't make sense to specify those settings in other cases. Furthermore, be aware that not all transaction managers will support those advanced features and thus might throw corresponding exceptions when given non-default values.

The read-only flag applies to any transaction context, whether backed by an actual resource transaction or operating non-transactionally at the resource level. In the latter case, the flag will only apply to managed resources within the application, such as a Hibernate Session.