The problem is that Hibernate will create a Transaction instance via java.sql.Connection and Infinispan will create a transaction via whatever TransactionManager returned by hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class. If hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class has not been populated, it will default to the dummy transaction manager.

So, any work on the 2nd level cache will be done under a different transaction to the one used to commit the stuff to the database via Hibernate. In other words, your operations on the database and the 2LC are not treated as a single unit. Risks here include failures to update the 2LC leaving it with stale data while the database committed data correctly.