Websphere 8.5 upgrade and java2 security - strange error in spring transaction - security

Question

We are migrating from WAS 6.1 to 8.5. I simply copied the EAR file which we used to deploy in 6.1 to 8.5. The application worked fine and I was happy until web-sphere admin decided to turn on Java2 security. The current was.policy file had java.security.AllPermission. But I guess this does not work with java2 security, so I changed it and granted io permission to every file which is read/written. After this, all permissions related errors are gone, but i am stuck with a strange exception:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'wsJtaTm' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]:
Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is
org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not instantiate bean class [org.springframework.transaction.jta.WebSphereTransactionManagerFactoryBean]:
Constructor threw exception; nested exception is
org.springframework.transaction.TransactionSystemException: Could not find WebSphere 5.1/6.0/6.1 TransactionManager factory class; nested exception is
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.ibm.ws.Transaction.TransactionManagerFactory
My spring transaction is defined like this:
<bean id="wsJtaTm"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.WebSphereTransactionManagerFactoryBean" />
<bean id="transactionManager"
class="org.springframework.transaction.jta.JtaTransactionManager">
<property name="transactionManager" ref="wsJtaTm" />
</bean>
I don't understand why the app would work when Java2 security is turned off, and why would it throw ClassNotFound exception when i turn the java2 security on.
According to my knowledge, com.ibm.ws.Transaction.TransactionManagerFactory should be loaded by server itself and should be made available to the app. i don't have any jar in my app having this class.
The error is originating from the constructor of bean id wsJtaTm. Am I missing something in was.policy file?
On further research, i found that this class is present inside a jar file named com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar in the plugins folder of server installation. I don't understand why this jar becomes in-visible when java2 security is turned on.
Please note I am using spring v2.5
Kindly help.

Answer 1

The com.ibm.ws.Transaction.TransactionManagerFactory class is not API, and WebSphere Application Server restricts access to non-API classes when Java 2 security is enabled (if applications could access internal classes, they could easily circumvent Java 2 security). Try using Spring's org.springframework.transaction.jta.WebSphereUowTransactionManager, which uses the supported UOWManager API.