If there is a global transaction declaration for “Supports” and a “Required” declaration for a specific Method the “Required” gets ignored. I first encountered the problem with an old 2.1 EJB, but the problem is also there with a 3.1 EJB with deployment descriptor. It works correct with annotations.

ejb-jar.xml snippet

   <container-transaction>
      <method>
         <ejb-name>UserDAOImpl</ejb-name>
          <method-name>*</method-name>
       </method>
       <trans-attribute>Supports</trans-attribute>
    </container-transaction>
    <container-transaction>
      <method>
         <ejb-name>UserDAOImpl</ejb-name>
         <method-intf>Local</method-intf>
         <method-name>createUser</method-name>
      </method>
      <trans-attribute>Required</trans-attribute>
   </container-transaction>