Normally, all entity bean updates within a transaction are batched and executed at the end of the transaction. The only exception is the database flush that precedes execution of a finder or select query.
Since a transaction often spans many method calls, you might want to find out if the updates made by a method succeeded or failed immediately after method execution. To force a flush at the end of a method’s execution, use the flush-at-end-of-method element in the sun-ejb-jar.xml file. Only non-finder methods in an entity bean can be flush-enabled. (For an EJB 2.1 bean, these methods must be in the Local, Local Home, Remote, or Remote Home interface.) See flush-at-end-of-method in Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server 2.1 Application Deployment Guide.
Upon completion of the method, the EJB container updates the database. Any exception thrown by the underlying data store is wrapped as follows:
If the method that triggered the flush is a create method, the exception is wrapped with CreateException.
If the method that triggered the flush is a remove method, the exception is wrapped with RemoveException.
For all other methods, the exception is wrapped with EJBException.
All normal end-of-transaction database synchronization steps occur regardless of whether the database has been flushed during the transaction.