Spring + Hibernate +JTA – HibernateTransactionManager or JTATransactionManager

If you want JTA support in Tomcat you'll need to use a standalone transaction manager like Atomikos, JOTM, Bitronix, SimpleJTA, JBossTS or GeronimoTM/Jencks. But honestly, if you're not going to handle transactions across multiple resources, then you can live without JTA (and if you really need JTA, use a full blown application server).

First of all - do you really need JTA? Typically spring+hibernate don't require it. You can use a simple JpaTransactionManager / HibernateTransactionManager.

If you really want JTA, then you will need a JTA provider. If not running in an application server, check this question for how to use JTA in a servlet container. (Also take a look at this question)

Finally, hibernate docs specify that, for container-managed transactions:

Declarative transaction demarcation is a standard feature of EJB, also known as container-managed transactions (CMT). In EJB 2.x you would use XML deployment descriptors to create your transaction assembly. In EJB 3.x you can use JDK 5.0 annotation metadata directly in your source code, a much less verbose approach. To enable CMT transaction demarcation for EJBs in Hibernate configuration:

• set hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class to a lookup strategy for your JEE container
• set hibernate.transaction.factory_class to org.hibernate.transaction.CMTTransactionFactory

The second point is perhaps something you've missed?

What the documentation says in addition to that (the next section) is that if you want declarative transaction, hibernate is not where you should look at. You'd need to create an interceptor. That's exactly what spring transaction managers are. And that would be my choice given your technology stack (Spring).

If you wish not to rely on a single JTA provider, then make two builds. For example maven has "maven profiles", which allow to make builds for different environments.