I need JDBC operations to be included with JMS transactions.

The quick answer would be to use JTA ... but I am not using any application
server nor any transaction manager.

Furthermore, I only have one database ( Sybase ), and I would like to use
Sybase via JConnect JDBC as the persistence for ActiveMQ, but also use the
same Sybase database for JDBC operations ... and have these external JDBC
operations and JMS sessions "combined into a single transaction". ( That is,
when I consume a message from the queue, I would do other JDBC
operations ... and that all of these should be treated as one
transaction ).

The closest thing that I can find is JOTM, an open source Java Transaction
Manager JTA implementation.

Has anyone used ActiveMQ  + JOTM ( no other appserver, no JNDI, etc. ) and
have JMS transactions and JDBC transactions managed by JOTM ??

What I am also concerned about is that, at the time that the article was
published and when the feedbacks were posted, according to someone ( from a
commercial competitor ) at that time, JOTM does not provide recovery:

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/07/30/jotm_transactions.html?page=2

Things must have changed since then for JOTM, and it appears it already
provides recovery .. though since I am no expert with XA or JTA, I do not
know if the recovery provided by JOTM is up to the required standard.