Autocommit Transactions
Autocommit mode is the default transaction management mode of the SQL Server Database Engine. Every Transact-SQL statement is committed or rolled back when it completes. If a statement completes successfully, it is committed; if it encounters any error, it is rolled back. A connection to an instance of the Database Engine operates in autocommit mode whenever this default mode has not been overridden by either explicit or implicit transactions. Autocommit mode is also the default mode for ADO, OLE DB, ODBC, and DB-Library.
A connection to an instance of the Database Engine operates in autocommit mode until a BEGIN TRANSACTION statement starts an explicit transaction, or implicit transaction is set on. When the explicit transaction is committed or rolled back, or when implicit transaction mode is turned off, the connection returns to autocommit mode.
When ON, SET IMPLICIT_TRANSACTIONS sets the connection to implicit transaction mode. When OFF, it returns the connection to autocommit transaction mode.
Compile and Run-time Errors
In autocommit mode, it sometimes appears as if an instance of the Database Engine has rolled back an entire batch instead of just one SQL statement. This happens if the error encountered is a compile error, not a run-time error. A compile error prevents the Database Engine from building an execution plan, so nothing in the batch is executed. Although it appears that all of the statements before the one generating the error were rolled back, the error prevented anything in the batch from being executed. In the following example, none of the INSERT statements in the third batch are executed because of a compile error. It appears that the first two INSERT statements are rolled back when they are never executed.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
CREATE TABLE TestBatch (Cola INT PRIMARY KEY, Colb CHAR(3));
GO
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (1, 'aaa');
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (2, 'bbb');
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUSE (3, 'ccc'); -- Syntax error.
GO
SELECT * FROM TestBatch; -- Returns no rows.
GO
In the following example, the third INSERT statement generates a run-time duplicate primary key error. The first two INSERT statements are successful and committed, so they remain after the run-time error.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
CREATE TABLE TestBatch (Cola INT PRIMARY KEY, Colb CHAR(3));
GO
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (1, 'aaa');
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (2, 'bbb');
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (1, 'ccc'); -- Duplicate key error.
GO
SELECT * FROM TestBatch; -- Returns rows 1 and 2.
GO
The Database Engine uses deferred name resolution, in which object names are not resolved until execution time. In the following example, the first two INSERT statements are executed and committed, and those two rows remain in the TestBatch table after the third INSERT statement generates a run-time error by referring to a table that does not exist.
USE AdventureWorks2008R2;
GO
CREATE TABLE TestBatch (Cola INT PRIMARY KEY, Colb CHAR(3));
GO
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (1, 'aaa');
INSERT INTO TestBatch VALUES (2, 'bbb');
INSERT INTO TestBch VALUES (3, 'ccc'); -- Table name error.
GO
SELECT * FROM TestBatch; -- Returns rows 1 and 2.
GO