EntityManager persist() method does not insert record to database

Can you post what exception are you getting? I will assume that your error is that your persistence.xml you don't specified your "Chain" Object.

You can specify using this tag

<exclude-unlisted-classes>false</exclude-unlisted-classes>

Or just

 <class>your.package.Chain</class>

Put this above provider tag.

Also, never set a number for a column tagged as @Id

When you use method save() with a Id column with setted value, hibernate will try to UPDATE NOT INSERT your data.

Do this: Create getEntityManager Method

public EntityManager getEntityManager() {
    return entityManager;
}

Then

@Transactional
public void saveChain(Chain chain) {

    chain.setDate(new Date());
    getEntityManager().persist(chain);
}

Try this:

em.getTransaction().begin();
em.persist(entity);
em.getTransaction().commit();

PS: You should set a generation method for your ID as well.

Are you getting a specific exception? It would be helpful to know what it is if you are.

There are a number of similar problems to this already on Stackoverflow:

Spring transactional context doesn't persist data

Spring, Hibernate & JPA: Calling persist on entitymanager does not seem to commit to database

These suggest that you should try adding em.flush() after the em.persist(chain), and altering the @transactional annotations

You should also check that you have enabled transactional annotations through a line such as :

<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="transactionManager"/> 

in your .xml configuration