Are temporary tables thread-safe?

Question

I'm using SQL Server 2000, and many of the stored procedures it use temp tables extensively. The database has a lot of traffic, and I'm concerned about the thread-safety of creating and dropping temp tables.

Lets say I have a stored procedure which creates a few temp tables, it may even join temp tables to other temp tables, etc. And lets also say that two users execute the stored procedure at the same time.

• Is it possible for one user to run the sp and which creates a temp table called #temp, and the another user runs the same sp but gets stopped because a table called #temp already exists in the database?

• How about if the same user executes the same stored procedure twice on the same connection?

• Are there any other weird scenarios that might cause two users queries to interfere with one another?

Answer 1

Local-scope temp tables (with a single #) are created with an identifier at the end of them that makes them unique; multiple callers (even with the same login) should never overlap.

(Try it: create the same temp table from two connections and same login. Then query tempdb.dbo.sysobjects to see the actual tables created...)

Answer 2

For the first case, no, it is not possible, because #temp is a local temporary table, and therefore not visible to other connections (it's assumed that your users are using separate database connections). The temp table name is aliased to a random name that is generated and you reference that when you reference your local temp table.

In your case, since you are creating a local temp table in a stored procedure, that temp table will be dropped when the scope of the procedure is exited (see the "remarks section").

A local temporary table created in a stored procedure is dropped automatically when the stored procedure completes. The table can be referenced by any nested stored procedures executed by the stored procedure that created the table. The table cannot be referenced by the process which called the stored procedure that created the table.

For the second case, yes, you will get this error, because the table already exists, and the table lasts for as long as the connection does. If this is the case, then I recommend you check for the existence of the table before you try to create it.