SQL with Manoj

In my previous post I mentioned that SQL statements inside the BEGIN & COMMIT TRANSACTION block do not auto rollback the batch if an error occurs, and SET XACT_ABORT ON is required for auto rollbacking the transaction batch in such cases.

As I mentioned earlier in my previous post that by default the SET XACT_ABORT is OFF. There ar very few cases where the T-SQL statement that raised exception are rolled back and the transaction continues processing. Depending upon the severity of the error, the entire transaction may be rolled back even when SET XACT_ABORT is OFF.

But When SET XACT_ABORT is ON, if a T-SQL statement raises an exception, then the entire transaction is terminated and rolled back.

But there is an exception for some errors, like for error level 16, example: Datatype Conversion error, the transaction batch is automatically rolled back.

–> Let’s check this with an example below:

-- Create a table and insert test some records
CREATE TABLE X (NBR INT PRIMARY KEY)

INSERT INTO X VALUES(1)
INSERT INTO X VALUES(2)

-- Tran t1 : PK violation error
BEGIN TRANSACTION T1
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(3)
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(3) -- Msg 2627, Level 14, State 1, Line 9, Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint...
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(4)
COMMIT TRANSACTION T1

SELECT * FROM X
-- Results 4 records inserted above, the entire transaction batch was not rolled back, but only the 2nd INSERT statement.

-- To automatically rollback above transaction batch we will set XACT_ABORT to ON:
SET XACT_ABORT ON

BEGIN TRANSACTION T1
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(3)
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(3) -- Msg 2627, Level 14, State 1, Line 9, Violation of PRIMARY KEY constraint...
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(4)
COMMIT TRANSACTION T1

SET XACT_ABORT OFF

SELECT * FROM X
-- No results, Entire transaction batch is rolled back.

--// But for some types of errors setting the XACT_ABORT to ON is not required. Like for Datatype Conversion errors (level = 16). Let's check this:

-- Tran t2: Datatype conversion error
BEGIN TRANSACTION T2
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(5)
	INSERT INTO X VALUES('a') -- Msg 245, Level 16, State 1, Line 19, Conversion failed...
	INSERT INTO X VALUES(6)
COMMIT TRANSACTION T2

SELECT * FROM X
-- No results, Entire transaction batch is rolled back.

-- Final Cleanup
DROP TABLE X

Erland Sommarskog in his tech-site lists and distinguish such error types: http://www.sommarskog.se/error-handling-I.html#statementbatch

I also discussed this topic in MSDN TSQL forum & here is the link.