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@TransactionAttribute applies to both methods and entire beans. You may set one type of transaction behaviour (as seen above) on the bean, and a different one on a specific method of that same bean, which overrides the one configured for the overall bean. For instance, maybe you want to make an audit log entry in the database that you are about to attempt a credit card payment. It really needs to be in it's own transaction so that it is IMMEDIATELY committed for audit purposes, if something goes wrong with the credit card payment. So, perhaps you use MANDATORY on the bean, and REQUIRES_NEW on the method for audit logging. As soon as the method that does the audit logging is complete, the transaction is committed, and the credit card payment transaction continues on it's way.