The JBoss DNA federated repositories also make it possible for client applications to make changes to the unified graph within the context of distributed transactions. According to the JCR API, client applications use the Java Transaction API (JTA) to control the boundaries of their transactions. Meanwhile, the federated repository uses a distributed transaction service to coordinate the XA resources provided by the connectors.

It is quite possible that clients add properties to nodes in the unified graph, and that this information cannot be handled by the same underlying source that contributed to the node. In this case, the federated repository can be configured with a fallback source that will be used used to store this "extra" information.

It is a goal that non-XA sources (i.e., sources that use connectors without XA resources) can participate in distributed transactions through the use of compensating transactions . Because the JBoss DNA federation engine implements the JCR observation system, it is capable of recording all of the changes made to the distributed graph (and those changes sent to each updatable source). Therefore, if a non-XA source is involved in a distributed transaction that must be rolled back, any changes made to non-XA sources can be undone. (Of course, this does not make the underlying source transactional: non-transactional sources still may expose the interim changes to other clients.)