Failed to commit transaction when rolling back schema changes in Cucumber @After hook

Rollback safety after a schema change in Cucumber

When a scenario creates or alters tables in an @Before hook, the test framework often relies on the underlying ORM to begin a transaction and then rolls it back in an @After hook. However, many databases do not support rolling back DDL statements, leading to the documented error Failed to commit transaction when a hook attempts to commit a transaction that was never opened or has already been rolled back.

The main constraints are:

• DDL changes are not transactional in most relational DBs.
• Nested transactions or savepoints may be ignored by the driver.
• Shared test databases risk residual schema artifacts across scenarios.

Given these uncertainties, the following questions remain:

1. What is the safest way to revert DDL changes made in a @Before hook without triggering a Failed to commit transaction error?
2. Does Cucumber provide any built‑in support or recommended pattern for per‑scenario isolated databases?
3. How can we detect and handle a failed transaction commit in an @After hook to ensure clean test isolation?