Narayana JDBC integration for Tomcat

Narayana implements JTA specification in Java. It's flexible and easy to be integrated to any system which desires transaction capabilities. As proof of the Narayana extensibility check our quickstarts like Spring Boot one or Camel one.
But this blogpost is different integration effort. It talks in details about Narayana integration with Apache Tomcat server.

If you do not care about details then just jump directly to the Narayana quickstarts in this area and use the code there for yourself.

• dbcp2-and-tomcat
• transactionaldriver-and-tomcat
• jca-and-tomcat

If you want more detailed understanding read further.
All the discussed abilities are considered as the state of Narayana 5.8.1.Final or later.

Narayana, database resources and JDBC interface

All the proclaimed Narayana capabilities to integrate with other systems come from requirements for the system to conform with the JTA specification. JTA expects manageable resources which follows XA specification in particular. For case of the database resources the underlaying API is defined by JDBC specification. JDBC assembled resources manageable by transaction manager under package javax.sql It defines interfaces used for managing XA capabilities. The probably most noticable is XADataSource which serves as factory for XAConnection. From there we can otain XAResource. The XAResource is interface that the transaction manager works with. The instance of it participates in the two phase commit.

The workflow is to get or create the XADataSource, obtains XAConnection and as next the XAResource which is enlisted to the global transaction (managed by a transaction manager). Now we can call queries or statements through the XAConnection. When all the business work is finished the global transaction is commanded to commit which is propagated to call the commit on each enlisted XAResources.

It's important to mention that developer is not expected to do all this (getting xa resources, enlisting them to transaction manager…) All this handling is responsibility of the "container" which could be WildFly, Spring or Apache Tomcat in our case.
Normally the integration which ensures the database XAResource is enlisted to the transaction is provided by some pooling library. By the term pooling library we means code that manages a connection pool with capability enlisting database resource to the transaction.

We can say at the high level that integration parts are

• the Apache Tomcat container
• Narayana library
• jdbc pooling library

In this article we will talk about Narayana JDBC transactional driver, Apache Commons DBCP and IronJacamar.

Narayana configuration with Tomcat

After the brief overview of integration requirements, let's elaborate on common settings needed for any integration approach you choose.
Be aware that each library needs a little bit different configuration and especially IronJacamar is specific.

JDBC pooling libraries integration

Narayana provides integration code in maven module tomcat-jta. That contains the glue code which integrates Narayana to the world of the Tomcat. If you write an application you will need the following:

• providing Narayana itself to the application classpath
• providing Narayana tomcat-jta module to the application classpath
• configure WEB-INF/web.xml with NarayanaJtaServletContextListener which ensures the intialization of Narayana transaction manager
• add META-INF/context.xml which setup Tomcat to start using implementation of JTA interfaces provided by Narayana
• configure database resources to be XA aware and cooperate with Narayana by setting them up in the META-INF/context.xml

NOTE: if you expect to use the IronJacamar this requirements differs a bit!

If we take a look at the structure of the jar to be deployed we would get the picture possibly similar to this one:

  ├── META-INF
  │   └── context.xml
  └── WEB-INF
      ├── classes
      │   ├── application…
      │   └── jbossts-properties.xml
      ├── lib
      │   ├── arjuna-5.8.1.Final.jar
      │   ├── jboss-logging-3.2.1.Final.jar
      │   ├── jboss-transaction-spi-7.6.0.Final.jar
      │   ├── jta-5.8.1.Final.jar
      │   ├── postgresql-9.0-801.jdbc4.jar
      │   └── tomcat-jta-5.8.1.Final.jar
      └── web.xml
  

From this summary let's overview the configuration files one by one to see what's needed to be defined there.

Configuration files to be setup for the integration

WEB-INF/web.xml

  <web-app>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.NarayanaJtaServletContextListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
  </web-app>
  

The web.xml needs to define the NarayanaJtaServletContextListener to be loaded during context initialization to initialize the Narayana itself. Narayana needs to get running, for example, reaper thread that ensures transaction timeouts checking or thread of recovery manager.

WEB-INF/clases/jbossts-properties.xml

This file is not compulsory. The purpose is to configure the Narayana itself.
If you don't use your own configuration file then the default is in charge. See more at blogpost Narayana periodic recovery of XA transactions or consider settings done by the default descriptor jbossts-properties.xml at narayana-jts-idlj.

META-INF/context.xml

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
  <Context antiJarLocking="true" antiResourceLocking="true">
      <!-- Narayana resources -->
      <Transaction factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.UserTransactionFactory"/>
      <Resource factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.TransactionManagerFactory"
        name="TransactionManager" type="javax.transaction.TransactionManager"/>
      <Resource factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.TransactionSynchronizationRegistryFactory"
        name="TransactionSynchronizationRegistry" type="javax.transaction.TransactionSynchronizationRegistry"/>

      <Resource auth="Container" databaseName="test" description="Data Source"
        factory="org.postgresql.xa.PGXADataSourceFactory" loginTimeout="0"
        name="myDataSource" password="test" portNumber="5432" serverName="localhost"
        type="org.postgresql.xa.PGXADataSource" user="test" username="test"
        uniqueName="myDataSource" url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test"/>
      <Resource auth="Container" description="Transactional Data Source"
        factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.TransactionalDataSourceFactory"
        initialSize="10" jmxEnabled="true" logAbandoned="true" maxAge="30000"
        maxIdle="16" maxTotal="4" maxWaitMillis="10000" minIdle="8"
        name="transactionalDataSource" password="test" removeAbandoned="true"
        removeAbandonedTimeout="60" testOnBorrow="true" transactionManager="TransactionManager"
        type="javax.sql.XADataSource" uniqueName="transactionalDataSource"
        username="test" validationQuery="select 1" xaDataSource="myDataSource"/>
  </Context>
  

I divide explanation this file into two parts. First are the generic settings - those needed for transaction manager integration (top part of the context.xml). The second part is on resource declaration that defines linking to the JDBC pooling library.

Transaction manager integration settings

We define implementation classes for the JTA api here. The implementation is provided by Narayana transaction manager. Those are lines of UserTransactionFactory and resources of TransactionManager and TransactionSynchronizationRegistry in the context.xml file.

JDBC pooling library settings

We aim to define database resources that can be used in the application. That's how you get the connection typically with code DataSource ds = InitialContext.doLookup("java:comp/env/transactionalDataSource"), and eventually execute a sql statement.
We define a PostgreSQL datasource with information how to create a new XA connection (we provide the host and port, credentials etc.) in the example.
The second resource is definition of jdbc pooling library to utilize the PostgreSQL one and to provide the XA capabilities. It roughtly means putting the PostgreSQL connection to the managed pool and enlisting the work under an active transaction.
Thus we have got two resources defined here. One is non-managed (the PosgreSQL one) and the second manages the first one to provide the ease work with the resources. For the developer is the most important to know he needs to use the managed one in his application, namely the transactionalDataSource from our example.

A bit about datasource configuration of Apache Tomcat context.xml

Let's take a side step at this place. Before we will talk in details about supported pooling libraries let's check a little bit more about the configuration of the Resource from perspective of XA connection in the context.xml.

Looking at the Resource definition there are highlighted parts which are interesting for us

  <Resource auth="Container" databaseName="test" description="Data Source"
    factory="org.postgresql.xa.PGXADataSourceFactory"
    loginTimeout="0" name="myDataSource" password="test" portNumber="5432" serverName="localhost"
    type="org.postgresql.xa.PGXADataSource" uniqueName="myDataSource"
    url="jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test" user="test" username="test"/>
  

name

defines the name the resource is bound at the container and we can use the jndi lookup to find it by that name in application

factory

defines what type we will get as the final created Object. The factory which we declares here is class which implements interface ObjectFactory and from the provided properties it construct an object.
If we would not define any factory element in the definition then the Tomcat class ResourceFactory is used (see default factory constants). The ResourceFactory will pass the call to the BasicDataSourceFactory of the dbcp2 library. Here we can see the importantce of the type xml parameter which defines what is the object type we want to obtain and the factory normally checks if it's able to provide such (by string equals check usually).
The next step is generation of the object itself where the factory takes each of the properties and tries to applied them.
In our case we use the PGXADataSourceFactory which utilizes some of the properties to create the XADataSource.

serverName, portNumber, databaseName, user, password

are properties used by the object factory class to get connection from the database
Knowing the name of the properties for the particular ObjectFactory is possibly the most important when you need to configure your datasource. Here you need to check setters of the factory implementation.
In case of the PGXADataSourceFactory we need to go through the inheritance hierarchy to find the properties are saved at BaseDataSource. For our case for the relevant properties are user name and password. From the BaseDataSource we can see the setter for the user name is setUser thus the property name we look for is user.

After this side step let's take a look at the setup of the Resources in respect of the used pooling library.

Apache Commons DBCP2 library

Quickstart: https://github.com/jbosstm/quickstart/tree/master/dbcp2-and-tomcat

The best integration comes probably with Apache Common DBCP2 as the library itself is part of the Tomcat distribution (the Tomcat code base uses fork of the project). The XA integration is provided in Apache Tomcat version 9.0.7 and later. There is added dbcp2 package managed which knows how to enlist a resource to XA transaction.

The integration is similar to what we discussed in case of the JDBC transactional driver. You need to have configured two resources in context.xml. One is the database datasource (see above) and other is wrapper providing XA capabilities.

  <Resource name="transactionalDataSource" uniqueName="transactionalDataSource"
    auth="Container" type="javax.sql.XADataSource"
    transactionManager="TransactionManager" xaDataSource="h2DataSource"
    factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.TransactionalDataSourceFactory"/>

The integration is here done over the use of the specific factory which directly depends on classes from Apache Tomcat org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp2 package. The factory ensures the resource being enlisted to the recovery manager as well.
The nice feature is that you can use all the DBCP2 configuration parameters for pooling as you would used when BasicDataSource is configured. See the configuration options and the their meaning at the Apache Commons documentation.

Summary:

• Already packed in the Apache Tomcat distribution from version 9.0.7
• Configure two resources in context.xml. One is the database datasource, the second is wrapper providing XA capabilities with use of the dbcp2 pooling capabilities integrated with TransactionalDataSourceFactory.

NOTE: if you consider checking the pool status over JMX calls then DBCP2 comes with BasicDataSourceMXBean which exposes some information about the pool. You need to provide jmxName in your context.xml. <Resource name="transactionalDataSource" uniqueName="transactionalDataSource" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.XADataSource" transactionManager="TransactionManager" xaDataSource="h2DataSource" jmxEnabled="true" jmxName="org.apache.commons.dbcp2:name=transactionalDataSource" factory="org.jboss.narayana.tomcat.jta.TransactionalDataSourceFactory"/>

Narayana jdbc transactional driver

Quickstart: https://github.com/jbosstm/quickstart/tree/master/transactionaldriver/transactionaldriver-and-tomcat

With this we will get back to other two recent articles about jdbc transactional driver and recovery of the transactional driver.
The big advantage of jdbc transactional driver is its tight integration with Narayana. It's the dependecy of the Narayana tomcat-jta module which contains all the integration code needed for Narayana working in Tomcat. So if you take the tomcat-jta-5.8.1.Final you have packed the Narayna integration code and jdbc driver in out-of-the-box working bundle.

Configuration actions

Here we will define two resources in the context.xml file. The first one is the database one.

  <Resource name="h2DataSource" uniqueName="h2Datasource" auth="Container"
    type="org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource" username="sa" user="sa" password="sa"
    url="jdbc:h2:mem:testdb;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1" description="H2 Data Source"
    loginTimeout="0" factory="org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSourceFactory"/>

The database one defines data needed for preparation of datasource and creation of the connection. The datasource is not XA aware. We need to add one more layer on top which is transactional JDBC driver here. It wraps the datasource connection within XA capabilities.

  <Resource name="transactionalDataSource" uniqueName="transactionalDataSource"
    auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" username="sa" password="sa"
    driverClassName="com.arjuna.ats.jdbc.TransactionalDriver"
    url="jdbc:arjuna:java:comp/env/h2DataSource" description="Transactional Driver Datasource"
    connectionProperties="POOL_CONNECTIONS=false"/>

As we do not define the element factory then the default one is used which is org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp2.BasicDataSourceFactory. Unfortunately, this is fine up to the time you need to process some more sophisticated pooling strategies. In this aspect the transactional driver does not play well with the default factory and some further integration work would be needed.

This configuration is nice for having transactionalDataSource available for the transactional work. Unfortunately, it's not all that you need to do. You miss here configuration of recovery. You need to tell the recovery manager what is the resource to care of. You can setup this in jbossts-properties.xml or maybe easier way to add it to environment variables of the starting Tomcat, for example by adding the setup under script $CATALINA_HOME/bin/setenv.sh
You define it with property com.arjuna.ats.jta.recovery.XAResourceRecovery.

-Dcom.arjuna.ats.jta.recovery.XAResourceRecovery1=com.arjuna.ats.internal.jdbc.recovery.BasicXARecovery;abs://$(pwd)/src/main/resources/h2recoveryproperties.xml

You can define whatever number of the resources you need the recovery is aware of. It's done by adding more numbers at the end of the property name (we use 1 in the example above). The value of the property is the class implementing com.arjuna.ats.jta.recovery.XAResourceRecovery. All the properties provided to the particular implementation is concatenated after the ; character. In our example it's path to the xml descriptor h2recoveryproperties.xml.
When transactional driver is used then you need to declareBasicXARecovery as recovery implementation class and this class needs connection properties to be declared in the xml descriptor.

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">
<properties>
  <entry key="DB_1_DatabaseUser">sa</entry>
  <entry key="DB_1_DatabasePassword">sa</entry>
  <entry key="DB_1_DatabaseDynamicClass"></entry>
  <entry key="DB_1_DatabaseURL">java:comp/env/h2DataSource</entry>
</properties>

Note: there is option not defining the two resources under context.xml and use the env property for recovery enlistment. All the configuration properties are then involved in one properties file and transactional driver dynamic class is used. If interested the working example is at ochaloup/quickstart-jbosstm/tree/transactional-driver-and-tomcat-dynamic-class.

Summary:

• Already packed in the tomcat-jta artifact
• Configure two resources in context.xml. One is database datasource, the second is transactional datasource wrapped by transactional driver.
• Need to configure recovery with env variable setup com.arjuna.ats.jta.recovery.XAResourceRecovery while providing xml descriptor with connection parameters

IronJacamar

Quickstart: https://github.com/jbosstm/quickstart/tree/master/jca-and-tomcat

The settings of IronJacamar integration differs pretty much from what we've seen so far. The IronJacamar implements whole JCA specification and it's pretty different beast (not just a jdbc pooling library).

The whole handling and integration is passed to IronJacamar itself.
You don't use tomcat-jta module at all.
You need to configure all aspects in the IronJacamar xml descriptors. Aspects like datasource definition, transaction configuration, pooling definition, up to the jndi binding.

The standalone IronJacamar is needed to be started with command org.jboss.jca.embedded.EmbeddedFactory.create().startup() where you defines the descriptors to be used. You can configure it in web.xml as ServletContextListener.

What are descriptors to be defined:

• jdbc-xa.rar which is resource adapter provided by IronJacamar itself. It needs to be part of the deployment. It's capable to process ds files.
• ds.xml which defines connecion properties and jndi name binding
• transaction.xml which configures transaction manager instead of use of the jbossts-properties.xml.

Check more configuration in IronJacamar documentation.

Summary: IronJacamar is started as embedded system and process all the handling on its own. Developer needs to provide xml descriptor to set up.

Summary

This article provides the details about configuration of the Narayana when used in Apache Tomcat container. We've seen the three possible libraries to get the integration working - the Narayana JDBC transactional driver, Apache DBCP2 library and IronJacamar JCA implementation.
On top of it, the article contains many details about Narayana and Tomcat resource configuration.

If you hesitate what alternative is the best fit for your project then this table can help you

JDBC integration library	When to use
Apache DBCP2	It's the recommended option when you want to obtain Narayana transaction handling in the Apache Tomcat Integration is done in the Narayana resource factory which ensures easily setting up the datasource and recovery in the one step.
Narayana transactional jdbc driver	Is good fit when you want to have all parts integrated and covered by Narayana project. It provides lightweight JDBC pooling layer that could be nice for small projects. Integration requires a little bit more hand working.
IronJacamar	To be used when you need whole JCA functionality running in Apache Tomcat. The benefit of this solution is the battle tested integration of Narayana and IronJacamar as they are delivered as one pack in the WildFly application server.

Recovery of Narayana jdbc transactional driver

The post about jdbc transactional driver introduced ways how you can start to code with it. The post talks about enlisting JDBC work into the global transaction but it omits the topic of recovery.
And it's here where using of transactional driver brings another benefit with ready to use approaches to set up the recovery. As in the prior article we will work with the jbosstm quickstart transactionaldriver-standalone.

After reading the post about transaction recovery you will find out that for the recovery manager would consider any resource that we enlist into the global transaction we have to:

• either ensure that resource could be serialized into Narayana transaction log store (resource has to be serializable), in which case the recovery manager deserialize the XAResource and use it directly to get data from it
• or to register recovery counterpart of the transaction enlistment which is capable to provide the instance of XAResource to the RecoveryModule
  in other words we need implemntation of XAResourceRecoveryHelper or XAResourceRecovery (and that's where transactional driver can help us).

For configuration of the recovery properties, we use the jbossts-properties.xml descriptor in our quickstart. We leave the most of the properties with their default values but we still need to concentrate to set up the recovery.
You can observe that it serves to define recovery modules, orphan filters or xa resource recovery helpers. Those are important entries for the recovery works for our transaction JDBC driver.
For better understanding what was set I recommend to check the comments there.

JDBC transaction driver and the recovery

In the prior article about JDBC driver we introduced three ways of providing connection data to the transaction manager (it then wraps the connection and provides transactionality in the user application). Let's go through the driver enlistment variants and check how the recovery can be configured for them.

XADataSource provided within Narayana JDBC driver properties

This is a variant where XADatasource is created directly in the code and then the created(!) instance is passed to the jdbc transactional driver.
As transactional driver receives the resource directly it does not have clue how to create such resource on its own during recovery. We have to help it with our own implementation of the XAResourceRecovery class. That has to be of course registered into environment bean (it's intentionally commented out as for testing purposes we need to change different variants).

• link to section of previous blogpost
• quickstart class enlisting the resource
• the implementation class providing the XAResource (in our case pretty dummy one)
• testcase with recovery

XADataSource bound to JNDI

This variant bound the XADatasource to JNDI name. The recovery can lookup the provided jndi name and receive it to create an XAConnection to find the indoubt transactions at database side.
The point here is to pass information about jndi name to the recovery process for it knowing what to search for.
The jdbc driver uses a xml descriptor for that purpose in two variants

• BasicXARecovery
• JDBCXARecovery

In fact, there is no big difference between those two variants and you can use whatever fits you better. In both versions you provide the JNDI name to be looked-up.

• link to section of previous blogpost
• quickstart class enlisting the resource
• testcase with recovery #1
• testcase with recovery #2
• configuration in the jbossts-properties.xml file

XADataSource connection data provided in properties file

The last variant uses properties file where the same connection information is used already during resource enlistment. And the same property file is then automatically used for recovery. You don't need to set any property manually. The recovery is automatically setup because the placement of the properties file is serialized into object store and then loaded during recovery.

• link to section of previous blogpost
• quickstart class enlisting the resource
• testcase with recovery

In this case you configured the PropertyFileDynamicClass providing datasource credentials for the transaction manager and the recovery too. If you would like to extend the behaviour you can implement your own DynamicClass (please consult the codebase). For the recovery would work automatically you need to work with the RecoverableXAConnection.

Summary

There is currently available three approaches for the setting up recovery of jdbc transactional driver
creation of your own XAResourceRecovery/XAResourceRecoveryHelper which is feasible if you want to control the creation of the datasource and jdbc connection on your own. Or using one of the prepared XAResourceRecovery classes - either JDBCXARecovery or BasicXARecovery where you provide xml file where you specify the JNDI name of the datasource. The last option is to use properties file which defines credentials for connection and for recovery too.

Narayana jdbc transactional driver

The purpose of this blog post is to summarize ways (in current days) how to setup and use Narayana JDBC driver in your standalone application. The text is divided to two parts. Where here in the first we show creating managed connection while in the second we talk a bit about settings for recovery.

Transactional aware JDBC connections

For working with multiple database connections in transactionaly reliable way
you need either hacking on transaction handling (totally not recommended, a good knowledge of XA specification is necessary) or use transaction manager to that for you.

The word multiple is important here as if you want to run only single database connection you are fine to use local JDBC transaction (Connection.setAutoCommit(false), https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/sql/Connection.html#setAutoCommit(boolean)). But if you want to manage transactionally multiple JDBC connections (different databases, running at different database accounts...) then you need transaction manager.

If you use a transaction manager for that purpose (expecting running a standalone application) you need to: initialize the transaction manager, begin transaction and enlist each resource with the transaction for transaction manager to know which are those participants that are expected to be finished with ACID guarantees.

If you use Narayana you have another option to use the Narayana JDBC transaction driver (https://github.com/jbosstm/narayana/blob/master/ArjunaJTA/jdbc/classes/com/arjuna/ats/jdbc/TransactionalDriver.java).
JDBC transactional driver makes your life easier as you can configure the driver once and then get a managed connection, wrapped by the transactional functionality and you don't need to care of if anymore.

Managing the transaction enlistment on your own

The first code example shows how to use transaction manager to manage JDBC connection. There is no JDBC transaction driver involved and you manage enlistment manually.

There is enlisted only one resource in this code example which does not require transaction manager to be used in fact. The main purpose of using transaction manager is for managing two or more distinct resources. Another reason could be the offered JTA API which can make the code clearer.

// here we get instance of Narayana transaction manager
TransactionManager tm = com.arjuna.ats.jta.TransactionManager.transactionManager();
// and beginning the global transaction for XAResources could be enlisted into
tm.begin();

// getting DB2 datasource which then provides XAResource
XADataSource dsXA = neworg.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource();
// the xa datasource has to be filled with information to connection happens, using setters
dsXA.set...();
// from XADataSource getting XAConnection and then the XAResource
XAConnection xaConn = dsXA.getXAConnection();
// transaction manager to be provided with the XAResource
tm.getTransaction().enlistResource(xaConn.getXAResource());

// the business logic in database in the transaction happening here
PreparedStatement ps = xaConn.getConnection().prepareStatement("INSERT INTO TEST values (?, ?)");
ps.setInt(1, 1);
ps.setString(2, "Narayana");

// statement executed and transaction is committed or rolled-back depending of the result
try {
  ps.executeUpdate();
  tm.commit();
} catch (Exception e) {
  tm.rollback();
} finally {
  xaConn.close(); // omitting try-catch block
}

You can compare approach of using JDBC local transaction not ensuring reliable resources management with use of Narayana with manual enlistment in the Narayana quickstarts.

 

Managing the transaction enlistment with use of the JDBC transactional driver

How is the same task will be with the transaction driver?
First we need an XADataSource to be provided to the transactional driver. Next we request connection from the transactional driver (and not directly from the XADataSource). As we requested the XADatasource from the driver it has chance to wrap it and it controls the connection. Thus the resource is automatically enlisted to an active transaction. That way you don't need to think of getting XAConnection and XADataSource and enlisting them to the transaction and you don't need to pass the transaction and the connection from method to a method as parameter but you can simply use the transactional driver connection withdrawal.

If you want to use the transactional driver in your project you will need to add two dependencies into configuration of your dependency management system. Here is what to use with maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.jboss.narayana.jta</groupId>
  <artifactId>narayana-jta</artifactId>
  <version>5.7.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.jboss.narayana.jta</groupId>
  <artifactId>jdbc</artifactId>
  <version>5.7.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

There are basically three possibilities how to provide XADataSource to the transactional driver. Let's go through them.

XADataSource provided within Narayana JDBC driver properties

First you can provide directly an instance of XADataSource. This single instance is used for the further connection distribution. This settings is done with property
TransactionalDriver.XADataSource. That key is filled with instance of the XADataSource.

You can examine this example in Narayana quickstart DriverProvidedXADataSource (two resources in use) and check the functionality in the test.

// XADataSource initialized to be passed to transactional driver
XADataSource dsXA = new org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource();

dsXA.set...();

// the datasource is put as property with the special name
Properties connProperties = new Properties();
connProperties.put(TransactionalDriver.XADataSource, dsXA);

// getting connection when the 'url' is 'jdbc:arjuna' prefix which determines
// the Naryana drive to be used
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(TransactionalDriver.arjunaDriver, connProperties);

// starting transaction
TransactionManager tm = com.arjuna.ats.jta.TransactionManager.transactionManager();
tm.begin();

// db business logic (sql insert query) preparation
PreparedStatement ps = conn.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO TEST values (?, ?)");
ps.setInt(1, 41);
ps.setString(2, "Narayana");

// execution, committing/rolling-back
try {
  ps.executeUpdate();
  tm.commit();
} catch (Exception e) {
  tm.rollback();
} finally {
  conn.close();
}

XADataSource bound to JNDI

Another possibility is using JNDI to bind the XADataSource to and provide the JNDI as part of the url to transactional driver.

You can examine this example in Narayana quickstart DriverIndirectRecoverable and check the functionality in the test.

// the JNDI name has to start with the Narayana transactional driver prefix,
// for would be determined that we want connection of transactional driver
// the suffix (here 'ds') is used as JNDI name that XADataSource will be bound to
XADataSource dsXA = JdbcDataSource ds = new JdbcDataSource();
dsXA.set...();

// binding xa datasource to JNDI name 'ds'
InitialContext ctx = new IntitialContext();
ctx.bind("ds", dsXA);

// passing the JNDI name 'ds' as part of the connection url that we demand
// the first part is narayana transactional driver prefix
String dsJndi = TransactionalDriver.arjunaDriver + "ds";
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(dsJndi, new Properties());

// get transaction driver and start transaction
TransactionManager tm = com.arjuna.ats.jta.TransactionManager.transactionManager();
tm.begin();

// data insertion preparation
PreparedStatement ps = conn.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO TEST values (?, ?)");
ps.setInt(1, 42);
ps.setString(2, "Narayana");

// execute, commit or rollback
try {
  ps.executeUpdate();
  tm.commit();
} catch (Exception e) {
  tm.rollback();
} finally {
  conn.close();
} 

XADataSource connection data provided in properties file

The third option is about construction a construct of dynamic class. Here the part of the url after the arjunaDriver prefix depends on implementation of interface com.arjuna.ats.internal.jdbc.DynamicClass.
Currently there is an only one provided com.arjuna.ats.internal.jdbc.drivers.PropertyFileDynamicClass.
This expects that the jdbc url contains path to the properties file where connection data for XADataSource class is provided. In particular the property file defines a name of class implementing the XADataSource interface. This name is written in the key xaDataSourceClassName. Next you need to provide connection data (jdbc url, username, password) where each of the properties
is dynamically invoked as a setter on the particular XADataSource instance. Which is exact name of the property depends on the database you and the JDBC driver you use.

You can examine this example in Narayana quickstart DriverDirectRecoverable and check the functionality in the test.

// jdbc url is defined with path to the properties file
// see the ./ds.properties as 'getConnection' url parameter
Properties props = new Properties();
props.put(TransactionalDriver.dynamicClass, PropertyFileDynamicClass.class.getName());
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(TransactionalDriver.arjunaDriver
  + "./ds.properties", props);

// starting transaction
TransactionManager tm = com.arjuna.ats.jta.TransactionManager.transactionManager();
tm.begin();

// data insertion preparation
PreparedStatement ps = conn.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO TEST values (?, ?)");
ps.setInt(1, 43);
ps.setString(2, "Narayana");

// execute, commit or rollback
try {
  ps.executeUpdate();
  tm.commit();
} catch (Exception e) {
  tm.rollback();
} finally {
  conn.close();
}

and the ./ds.properties file could look like this. We use H2 jdbc driver and if you check the API of the driver you will find there setters like setURL, setUser and setPassword which are used to fill connection data after XADataSource is intialized by default constructor.

# implementation of XADataSource
xaDataSourceClassName=org.h2.jdbcx.JdbcDataSource
# properties which will be invoked on dynamically created XADataSource as setters.
# For example there will be call
# JdbcDataSource.setURL("jdbc:h2:mem:test1;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1")
URL=jdbc:h2:mem:test1;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1
User=sa
Password=sa

In summary

Let's put together properties and their usage. The properties used in the transactional driver could be verified in the code of TransactionalDriver.

• TransactionalDriver.arjunaDriver (jdbc:arjuna:) is a prefix of jdbc url which defines the Narayana transactional driver is in demand. Data after this prefix is used as parameter for later use.

Properties provided at time of connection request defines how to get XADataSource implementation.

• TransactionalDriver.XADataSource when used it defines that implementation of XADataSource was provided as parameter and will be used for connection withdrawal 
• TransactionalDriver.dynamicClass defines name of class implementing interface com.arjuna.ats.internal.jdbc.DynamicClass which is then used for dynamically creating of the XADataSource. 
• TransactionalDriver.userName and TransactionalDriver.password you can use if you the particular connection needs to be specified with the values. They will be used in call of XADataSource.getXAConnection(username, password).
• TransactionalDriver.poolConnections is default as true. The current behavior is simple. There is created a pool for each jdbc url, internal check verifies if the particular connection is in use, if not then it's passed for the usage otherwise it's created a new connection. The pool capacity is defined by property TransactionalDriver.maxConnections. When the connection is closed then it is returned to the pool and marked as 'not under use'. For some more sophisticated pool management some 3rd party pool management project is recommended.
  If this property is set to false then a new connection is returned each time is asked for. That way you need to pass this connection over the application.