The present invention supports container-provided EJB timer service that allows EJB instances dealing with timed events to create and register for a timer, which is scheduled to send notifications either at a specific time and/or after a specific elapsed duration, or at specific recurring intervals. When the timer expires, certain business logic inside the EJB instance will be invoked to handle the timeout event. When the cancel method of a timer is called, the timer may cease to exist. The timer is capable of retrying failed timeout under certain conditions when the current invocation of timeout logic fails. In addition, the timer is capable of monitoring the access from multiple registered EJB instances enrolled in transactions under multi-threaded environment, and restricting the access to the timer from EJB instances in certain threads until the current transaction accessing the timer commits to prevent a potential conflicting situation. This description is not intended to be a complete description of, or limit the scope of, the invention. Other features, aspects, and objects of the invention can be obtained from a review of the specification, the figures, and the claims.