AI Requests and Transactional Boundaries in Spring

When you use AI operations within a Spring application, understanding how these operations fit into transactional boundaries is crucial for ensuring reliability and data integrity.

Timing of AI Requests Within Transactions

• Spring manages transactions using the @Transactional annotation;
• Any code, including AI requests, that runs inside a transactional method is subject to the transaction's lifecycle;
• AI requests made before a transaction commits will see uncommitted changes within that transaction;
• If you place AI requests after a transaction commits, they will only see the final, persisted state.

Atomicity and AI Results

• Transactions in Spring ensure atomicity: either all operations succeed, or none are applied;
• If you generate an AI result and store it within a transaction, the result is only persisted if the entire transaction completes successfully;
• If the transaction rolls back, any AI results or related database changes are discarded, maintaining consistency between your data and AI outputs.

Practical Example

Suppose you have a service method that saves a user record and then generates a personalized AI summary for that user:

@Transactional
public void createUserWithAISummary(User user) {
    userRepository.save(user); // Database save (uncommitted)
    String summary = aiService.generateSummary(user); // AI request within the transaction
    user.setSummary(summary);
    userRepository.save(user); // Save summary
} // Transaction commits here

• If any part of this process fails, the entire transaction—including the AI summary—is rolled back;
• The AI operation sees the user's state as it exists within the transaction, before commit.

Key Takeaways

• Place AI requests thoughtfully within transactional methods to control what data the AI sees and when results are persisted;
• Always ensure that AI-generated data is consistent with your transactional boundaries to avoid stale or orphaned results.