Application Transactions

[qwertywin]

Ok so im slowly churning through Seam in Action (Dan Allen, nice book), and got to the application transactions section, now what I am confused about is that when the transaction opens, does it not also open a database transaction - thus tying up some DB resources for the life of the transaction?
Or am i missing something here, I had always assumed that once the persistence manager opens a transaction, it also opens a database transaction, or does it not do this until the first flush, thus making all the updates atomic and not tying up a DB transaction for user think time.

[gardellajuan]

This article perhaps help you

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-ts2.html

[qwertywin]

Ok so I think it as I thought (though im still not clear)

the transaction is NOT a DB transaction, until the point at which it needs to be (some DB change happens, or we flush)