Should I be using SQL transactions, while reading records?

Question

SQL transactions is used for insert, update, but should it be used for reading records?

Answer 1

If you are querying all the records in a single query, and pulling them back in one go, there is no need. Everything is wrapped up in an implicit transaction. That is to say, even if you get back one million records, and even if other processes are changing the records, you'll see what all one million records looked like at the same point in time.

The only times you would really need a transaction (and, often, a specific locking hint) in a read only process are:
- You read the records "piece-meal" and need nothing else to alter the values while you itterate though. [Such as a connected recordset in ADO that you then cursor through.]
- You read some data, do some calculations, then read some related data, but on the assumption nothing changed in the mean time.

In short, you need transactions when you want other processes to be stopped from interfering with your data between SQL statements.

Answer 2

Transaction wrapping is not needed for pure reads.

Within your SQL statement, Lock Hints should take care returning proper data to you (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa213026%28SQL.80%29.aspx).

On a server level, you can set Transaction Isolation levels (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173763.aspx).

Edit

Explaining pure reads

If all your SQL statement has these kinds of reads then you do not need to wrap in a transaction

SELECT Col1, Col2
From Table1
    INNER JOIN Table2
        ON Table1.Id = Table2.Table1Id

If you are reading results that can be affected by other transactions in parallel then you must wrap in a transaction. For eg:

BEGIN TRANSACTION

INSERT INTO AccountTransactions (Type, Amount) Values ('Credit', 43.21)
UPDATE AccountSummary SET Balance = Balance + 43.21

SELECT @Balance = Balance FROM AccountSummary

COMMIT TRANSACTION

Really, you are just returning the balance, but the entire monetary transaction has to work in two places.