How do I enable nested transactions with ADO.NET and SQL Server?
ado.net, c#, nested-transactions, sql-server
Solution
SQL Server as a whole does not support nested transactions. In T-SQL you can issue a `BEGIN TRAN` inside an earlier `BEGIN TRAN` but this is just for convenience. It's only the outer transaction that counts. The .NET client for SQL Server (`SqlConnection`) does not even allow you to do that and throws this exception when you try.
Problem
I have similar question to how to check if you are in a transaction. Instead of checking, how do I allow nested transactions? I am using Microsoft SQL Server Database with ADO.NET. I have seen examples using T-SQL and examples starting transactions using begin and using transaction names. When calling connection.BeginTransaction, I call another function in the same connection, and it calls BeginTransaction again which gives me the exception: ``` SqlConnection does not support parallel transactions. ``` It appears many Microsoft variants allow this, but I can't figure out how to do it with my .mdf file. How do I allow nested transactions with a Microsoft SQL Server Database using C# and ADO.NET?