What are the consequences of annotating a component with @Transactional for a private method?

Annotating a private method of a component with @Transactional in Java (for example, in Spring) will not result in the expected transactional behavior. This is because Spring creates proxies to manage transactions, and proxies only work with public methods.

If the method is private, the call to the transactional method occurs within the same class directly, bypassing the proxy, and the @Transactional annotation will not take effect — a transaction will not be created.

As a result:

• A transaction will not start when calling a private method.
• All operations within the method will execute without transaction management.

For transactions to work correctly, methods annotated with @Transactional should be public and called from outside through the proxy.