Propagation.REQUIRES_NEW does not create a new transaction in Spring with JPA

My guess is that since both methods are in the same bean, the Spring's AOP does not have a chance to intercept the create/updateSampleObject method calls. Try moving the methods to a separate bean.

Spring transactions are proxy-based. Here's thus how it works when bean A causes a transactional of bean B. A has in fact a reference to a proxy, which delegates to the bean B. This proxy is the one which starts and commits/rollbacks the transaction:

A ---> proxy ---> B

In your code, a transactional method of A calls another transactional method of A. So Spring can't intercept the call and start a new transaction. It's a regular method call without any proxy involved.

So, if you want a new transaction to start, the method createSampleObject() should be in another bean, injected into your current bean.

This is explained with more details in the documentation.