When to use Transactions in SQL Server

Question

There are lots and lots of questions on HOW to use Transactions. What I want to know is WHEN? Under what circumstances? What types of queries? Can Try-Catch blo

Answer 1

You use transactions when the set of database operations you are making needs to be atomic.

That is - they all need to succeed or fail. Nothing in between.

Transactions are to be used to ensure that the database is always in a consistent state.

In general, unless there is a good reason not to use them (long running process for instance), use them. See this blog post for details.

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Try/Catch blocks have nothing to do with transactions - they are used for exception handling. The two concepts are not related and are not replacements for each other.