Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Ambient Transactions

With a title like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the post was going to be about purchasing a beer at Cafe del Mar while watching the sun set. Unfortunately not.

First, consider this sample block of code:
using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
using (SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(commandText, connection))
{
// do something
}


There is no mention of any transactions; if you're like me you'd think that two things happen by the end of the block:
  • SQL Server doesn't still hold any locks for the data accessed in the block, and

  • The connection was returned to the pool for somebody else to use.

Wrong on both counts.
See what happens if the block was wrapped in another block (even a couple of frames higher on the stack):
using (TransactionScope transactionScope = new TransactionScope())
{
// substitute original block here
}

Although nothing in our inner block explicitly references any transactions, an ambient transaction (i.e. one on the current thread) has been setup by our outer block and SQL Server enlists in this transaction. At the point the inner block completes, the transaction is incomplete; although the connection is returned to the connection pool, it's in a cordoned off section of the pool where it cannot be used by any other thread that's not sharing the same transaction.

Let's imagine we set Max Pool Size=1 in our connection string. This means we have 1 connection in the pool, but it's only available to the ambient transaction. If we try to obtain another connection from the pool from a different thread with no transaction or a different transaction (even a different ambient transaction) we would timeout waiting. If, instead, we repeated the inner block twice within the outer block, it would be fine: the second acquisition of a connection from the connection pool would grab the one with the (still open) ambient transaction. If we shared our transaction with another thread, we'd be able to aquire that same connection from the connection pool too.

Here's a fun exercise for the imagination: Set Max Pool Size=2; then open two connections concurrently within the same TransactionScope. You'll automatically have enlisted in a distributed transaction (not just the lightweight transaction outlined in the first part of the post). Hey presto, you're sharing a transaction across more than one SQL connection into the same server!

There are several points to take away from this post:
You can force connections not to enlist in ambient transactions by using the Enlist=false connection string property.
You can implicitly participate in transactions (whether lightweight or distributed) even when you're not expecting to.
The connection pool is slightly more complex than at first it seemed - even returning a connection to the pool doesn't guarantee its availability for other operations.
Locks can remain held long after the connection has been disposed (returned to the pool)

For more information

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