A database transaction in any relational database management system (RDBMS) is a sequence of one or more SQL operations that are executed as a single unit of work. The primary characteristics and properties of transactions are encapsulated in the ACID principles:

1. Atomicity: Ensures that all operations within the transaction are completed successfully. If any operation fails, the entire transaction is rolled back, and the database state is left unchanged.
2. Consistency: Guarantees that a transaction will bring the database from one valid state to another. The database must be consistent before and after the transaction.
3. Isolation: Ensures that concurrently executed transactions do not affect each other. The intermediate state of a transaction is invisible to other transactions.
4. Durability: Once a transaction is committed, it will remain so, even in the event of a system failure.

Using JDBC API in the code snippet below we can check whether a database support transaction or not:

package org.kodejava.jdbc;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.DatabaseMetaData;
import java.sql.SQLException;

public class TransactionSupportChecker {
    private static final String URL = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/kodejava";
    private static final String USERNAME = "kodejava";
    private static final String PASSWORD = "s3cr*t";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try (Connection connection =
                     DriverManager.getConnection(URL, USERNAME, PASSWORD)) {
            DatabaseMetaData metadata = connection.getMetaData();

            boolean supported = metadata.supportsTransactions();
            System.out.println("Product Name        : " + metadata.getDatabaseProductName());
            System.out.println("Supports Transaction: " + supported);
        } catch (SQLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Output of the code snippet:

Product Name        : MySQL
Supports Transaction: true

Maven Dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
    <version>8.4.0</version>
</dependency>