Declarative transactions replace old complexity with newer, more awful complexity.

JDBC is a bit hard to use in the raw. Dealing with cursor leaks and making sure that you've closed things in finally{} clauses is tedious. But it's well understood. I don't mind dealing with it. In fact, I think application programmers really need to understand transactions in order to code the application properly. That's not to say that I want to force JDBC down everyone's throat. I just want application programmers to appreciate that talking to a relational database does require some understanding of what a relational database does.

Declarative transactions were supposed to make transaction management simple. They don't. They just make it confusing in new ways that involve annotations, XML, third party frameworks, and good god, AOP. All of this just to avoid a few finally{} clauses and a few calls to close{}? Take a look at this 15 page article from developerworks. 15 pages, just for some common transaction pitfalls. Something smells funny.

TL;DR: Transaction management is still complicated. I liked it better when I could deal with it in plain Java instead of having to learn Spring, AOP, and annotations.