Hi .. What version of jackrabbit are you using ? In some older versions the changes are not visible to other sessions in xa environment. The changes will be available if the server cleans up the managed connection so this is the phenomenon you are seeing. In the 2.4.3 version this should be fixed.
There is also a open issue about the missing local transaction support but a patch is available. https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JCR-861 greets claus
