A while back we ran into an issue with one of our projects where we executed a erroneous query (missing DELETE statement), and then left the database in an inconsistent state.

Which is weird, considering the fact that we use a TransactionScope.

After some digging around I found the behavior I wanted, and how to write it in correct C#.

Allow me to elaborate.

Consider a database with 3 tables:

T2 --> T1 <-- T3

Where both T2 and T3 link to an entity in T1, thus we cannot delete lines from T1 that are still referenced in T2 or T3.

I jumped to C# and started playing with some code, and discovered the following (mind you, each piece of code is actually supposed to throw an exception and abort):

This doesn’t use a TransactionScope, thus leaving the database in an inconsistent state:

using (var sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
{
    sqlConnection.Open();

    using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = sqlConnection.CreateCommand())
    {
        sqlCommand.CommandText = "USE [TransactionScopeTests]; DELETE FROM T3; DELETE FROM T1;"; 
        // DELETE FROM T1 will cause violation of integrity, because rows from T2 are still using rows from T1.

        sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
    } 
}

Now I wanted to wrap this in a TransactionScope, so I tried this:

using (var sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
{
    sqlConnection.Open();

    using (var transactionScope = new TransactionScope())
    {
        using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = sqlConnection.CreateCommand())
        {
            sqlCommand.CommandText = "USE [TransactionScopeTests]; DELETE FROM T3; DELETE FROM T1;"; 

            sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
        }

        transactionScope.Complete();
    }
}

Well guess what, this essentially fixes nothing. The database, upon completion of the ExecuteNonQuery() is left in the same inconsistent state. T3 was empty, which shouldn’t happen since the delete from T1 failed.

So what is the correct behavior?

Well, it doesn’t matter whether you create the TransactionScope or the SqlConnection first, as long as you Open() the SqlConnection inside of the TransactionScope:

using (var transactionScope = new TransactionScope())
{
    using (var sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
    {
        sqlConnection.Open();

        using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = sqlConnection.CreateCommand())
        {
            sqlCommand.CommandText = "USE [TransactionScopeTests]; DELETE FROM T3; DELETE FROM T1;"; 

            sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
        }

        transactionScope.Complete();
    }
}

Or the inverse (swapping the declaration of the TransactionScope and SqlConnection):

using (var sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
{
    using (var transactionScope = new TransactionScope())
    {
        sqlConnection.Open();

        using (SqlCommand sqlCommand = sqlConnection.CreateCommand())
        {
            sqlCommand.CommandText = "USE [TransactionScopeTests]; DELETE FROM T3; DELETE FROM T1;"; 

            sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery();
        }

        transactionScope.Complete();
    }
}

I wrote the test cases on a project on GitHub which you can download, compile and run as Tests for yourself!

https://github.com/kristof-mattei/transaction-scope

Have a good one,

-Kristof