1. General Product Questions

1.1. What do Atomikos products do?

Our products do transaction management offering support for JDBC/XA pools, JMS/XA pools and JTA/XA to enable transaction processes without needing an application server.

1.2. How is Atomikos different?

We offer our technology as a component - not a platform - so you can embed it into your application and you don't need an application server. This means that we adapt to your application, instead of the other way around. This gives you significant efficiency and performance gains, and increased agility. Plus, we support elastic computing.

2. TransactionsEssentials Licensing Questions

2.1. Why is it free?

It is free because we want to reach the largest possible community of fans that are happily using our product - secretly hoping that you will recommend us to your friends. Once in a while, somebody comes along who likes us enough to pay for our commercial offerings so in the end everybody wins. It's that simple…

2.2. Is the (open source) license viral?

No it is not. We use the Apache license, second version. You can use TransactionsEssentials in just about any way you like, without the need to open up the sources of your own work.

2.3. Can I bundle TransactionsEssentials in my closed source product?

Yes, the apache license clearly allows this. The more people use TransactionsEssentials, the better we like it.

2.4. What does the patent notice mean? Why does it say that I shouldn't implement the interface com.atomikos.icatch.Participant?

It is possible to implement the Participant interface in ways that may violate known patents and patents pending to which the TransactionsEssentials license does not (and cannot) grant the rights. This is particularly true in the case of web services. Although it is unlikely that anybody will want to do this, the warning is still there in the notice file. The built-in implementations of Participant (e.g., in the com.atomikos.datasource.xa package) do not violate any patents - at least not to our knowledge - so there is no need to worry.

2.5. Are contributions distributed as open source too?

All approved contributions are guaranteed to be distributed under the same open source (apache) license as TransactionsEssentials. Contributions by the Atomikos Community, for the Atomikos Community.

2.6. Why do contributors need to sign an agreement?

Approved contributions are guaranteed to be distributed under the same open source (apache) license as TransactionsEssentials. We ask contributors to sign an agreement for the following reasons:

• So that Atomikos can publish the contributions as apache-licensed.
• So that Atomikos can protect contributors from infringement law suits and other legal risks typical for open source projects.
• So that Atomikos can represent the entire community in such legal affairs (without having to gather all contributors in court).
• To keep patented code out of TransactionsEssentials, so that TransactionsEssentials can remain free and open.

In other words: the agreement allows Atomikos to protect and enforce the rights of the entire community. This is similar to what many open source organizations do, including Apache (to name just one).

3. ExtremeTransactions Licensing Questions

3.1. Is ExtremeTransactions free?

No. Customers who pay us often find it hard to justify a budget for something that is free, so ExtremeTransactions includes extra benefits that are reserved for paying customers. And to be totally honest: we can't afford to offer everything we do for free; somebody needs to pay our lunch

3.2. Is ExtremeTransactions open source?

No, it is not. Although based on our open source core, this product is closed-source and has a proprietary license. You may use this product only if you are a subscriber (see Buy Atomikos ExtremeTransactions: Subscription Pricing). Educational licenses are available for approved institutions - Contact Us to find out more.

3.3. Can I evaluate ExtremeTransactions before buying?

Yes, see ExtremeTransactions Free Trial to apply.

3.4. Can I redistribute ExtremeTransactions?

Yes, if you have an agreement to do so. Redistribution agreements are available from Atomikos.

3.5. How does the pricing model of ExtremeTransactions fit virtualization?

Our prices are not based on core counts or CPU counts. We don't care how many times you install it (because we think the more you use it, the more value it brings you).

4. Support Questions

4.1. Is prior application certification required before we can get support?

No. This used to be the case but we've moved away from that because people did not like it. These days, we'll give you support as soon as you subscribe so there are no delays involved.

5. Technical Questions

5.1. How do I use Atomikos with Maven?

Our latest releases are maven compatible and we have our own maven repository (the URL is included in the download email which is sent to you after you complete the TransactionsEssentials Download Form).

5.2. How can I disable lookup of jta.properties?

In pre-4.0 releases, setting the system property com.atomikos.icatch.no_file to an arbitrary non-null value will avoid lookup of any properties file. In that case, you must supply the properties as a constructor argument to the UserTransactionServiceImp object. As of release 4.0, there is no explicit way to avoid lookup - but lookup errors will not lead to any warnings.

If you want to use a specific file of your own, you can set the system property com.atomikos.icatch.file to contain the full path to your own properties file. In that case, jta.properties won't be searched either.

5.3. Do you support the 'last-resource' gambit?

Yes, see Using non-XA JDBC drivers

5.4. Can I use third-party connection pools?

Yes and no. You can, if these pools are compliant with our JTA design. See Using an external connection pool with TransactionsEssentials® for the underlying explanation.

5.5. Do you support statement caching for JDBC?

No, with good reason: you should use the JDBC driver's built-in statement caching because the driver has more information to drive reuse, plus the driver can even reuse statements across connections (see this link for some background information).

If you are here because of performance problems then we invite you to try our commercial product which has numerous performance improvements that will likely give you what you want.

6. Other Questions

6.1. Why is Atomikos not in standards bodies like OASIS?

Although we did web service transactions before the term "web service" was invented, we are not in standards bodies like OASIS because we own important intellectual property rights that we would need to give up due to such membership (yes, we believe in IPR).

However, we are closely observing any standardization process related to transactions and history has proven that we are successful at supporting any standard that comes up. We are also glad to give feedback on such standardization efforts provided that it does not affect our IPR.