Support nested transactions

Hi. Is nesting transactions supported?

I’m trying to implement 2 following scenarios with nested transactions: 1)

var rootTransaction = context.Database.BeginTransaction();
// Add 1st part of data to DB 
var innerTransaction = context.Database.BeginTransaction();
// Add 2nd part of data to DB 
innerTransaction.Rollback();
rootTransaction.Commit();

In this case all will be ok. In DB will be stored 1st part of data only.

var rootTransaction = context.Database.BeginTransaction();
// Add 1st part of data to DB 
var innerTransaction = context.Database.BeginTransaction();
// Add 2nd part of data to DB 
innerTransaction.Commit();
rootTransaction.Rollback();

I assume that all data should be removed from DB as I made rollback root transaction. But 2nd part of data still exist in DB.

How to implement nested transactions?

[StrangeWill]

Kind of mixed on this – nested transactions can be really useful. Mostly for automated tests. I like setting up a database in a state, starting a transaction, running a test, then rolling it back. Makes integration tests really nice.

But some of our more complex stuff uses transactions itself, then it explodes due to nested transactions.

Pondering if I have other options but a nested transaction would make this work really well.

Implicit transactions sort of work, but there are times we may read a few pieces of work then writing to the database, and we don’t want a race conditions between the read/write cycle.

I understand the annoyance of various database engines having spotty support for this if any.

[ShadySadek]

Thanks @ajcvickers for your reply Just to give you more context, in the following code i am assuming that for-each will be executed twice: -first loop will be executed successfully and commit the inner transaction. -second loop will fail and Rollback the inner transaction.

I am expected to find the added rows by the first transaction before rollback the outer transaction but looks like what is happening is rolling back second loop will roll back also first loop

looks like using BeginTransaction within TransactionScope has some issues in addition to the issues with nested transaction in EF6

Any thoughts on this? FYI: there is another post that is reporting the same issue : [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/36396570/using-transactionscope-and-ef-transactions]

 using (var OuterTransactionScope = new TransactionScope())
            {
                using (DbContext = new DbContext())
                {
                    foreach (var x in list) // assume this will be executed twice 
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            var innerTransaction = DbContext.Database.BeginTransaction(isolationLevel);
                            DbContext.SaveChanges(); //Add row
                            DbContext.SaveChanges(); //Add row
                            innerTransaction.Commit();
                        }
                        catch (Exception ex)
                        {
                            innerTransaction.Rollback();
                        }
                    }
                    //Expecting to find two rows here but Actually no data get added
                }