When it comes to transaction management in software development, declarative transaction management is a preferred approach among developers. This is especially true when working with Spring applications, where an XML-based configuration and annotation-based processing are both available. In comparison to programmatic transactions, the declarative model makes it easier to configure and manage transactions as part of an application.   Annotation-based configuration also allows different groups of services to share the same transaction boundaries, enabling developers to define multiple transactional units which can execute in isolation or together. This simplifies the development process and helps minimize rollbacks due to errors while enhancing overall performance. Furthermore, switching from one platform to another requires minimum effort since the underlying configuration is independent of the platform being used.   Declarative transaction management also ensures that there are no excessive locks created for long running operations, ensuring efficient read/write operations in Spring applications. Ultimately, this makes declarative transaction management a preferred choice for developing robust Spring applications.