> I have no idea what constitutes a "managed" transaction. This terminology
> kind of smacks to me of EJB development, and we're not writing EJBs here,
> but I guess I just don't know what you guys mean by "managed" in this
> context.

'Managed' means that someone else manages the transaction, not your code.
So from Tomcat's point of view the transaction is not managed, same for the
base class servlet.
But from your point of view someone else cares for begin and commit, so you
can assume it is managed.