Transactions Architecture

Microsoft® SQL Server™ maintains the consistency and integrity of each database despite errors that occur in the system. Every application that updates data in a SQL Server database does so using transactions. A transaction is a logical unit of work made up of a series of statements (selects, inserts, updates, or deletes). If no errors are encountered during a transaction, all of the modifications in the transaction become a permanent part of the database. If errors are encountered, none of the modifications are made to the database.

A transaction goes through several phases:

• Before the transaction starts, the database is in a consistent state.
• The application signals the start of a transaction. This can be done explicitly with the BEGIN TRANSACTION statement. Alternatively, the application can set options that a new transaction is started automatically by the first Transact-SQL statement executed after the completion of a prior transaction. No record is written to the log at this point; the first record is written to the log when the application generates the first log record for a data modification.
• The application starts modifying data. These modifications are made one table at a time. As a series of modifications are made, they may leave the database in a temporarily inconsistent intermediate state.
• When the application reaches a point where all the modifications have completed successfully and the database is once again consistent, the application commits the transaction. This makes all the modifications a permanent part of the database.
• If the application encounters some error that prevents it from completing the transaction, it undoes, or rolls back, all the data modifications. This returns the database to the point of consistency it was at before the transaction started.

SQL Server applications can also run in autocommit mode. In autocommit mode each individual Transact-SQL statement is committed automatically if it is successful and rolled back automatically if it generates an error. There is no need for an application running in autocommit mode to issue statements that specifically start or end a transaction.

All Transact-SQL statements run in a transaction; either an explicit transaction or an autocommit transaction. All SQL Server transactions that include data modifications either reach a new point of consistency and are committed, or are rolled back to the original point of consistency. Transactions are not left in an intermediate state where the database is not consistent.

See Also

Transactions