Using transaction on a single update statement

Question

I am dubbing some SP at work and I have discover that whoever wrote the code used a transaction on a single update statement like this

begin transaction 
*single         


        

Answer 1

Hopefully your colleague's code looks more like this, otherwise SQL will issue a syntax error. As per Ypercube's comment, there is no real purpose in placing one statement inside a transaction, but possibly this is a coding standard or similar.

begin transaction  -- Increases @@TRANCOUNT to 1
update table whatever with whatever
commit transaction  -- DECREMENTS @@TRANCOUNT to 0

Often, when issuing adhoc statements directly against SQL, it is a good idea to wrap your statements in a transaction, just in case something goes wrong and you need to rollback, i.e.

begin transaction -- Just in case my query goofs up
update table whatever with whatever
select ... from table ... -- check that the correct updates / deletes / inserts happened
-- commit transaction  -- Only commit if the above check succeeds.