ASP in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Chapter 6. ObjectContext Object

As of version 2.0, an important feature of Active Server Pages is the ability to create a transactional script: one whose constituent code segments all succeed completely or fail as a group. For example, using such a script, one section of code could remove a record from an inventory table, and a second section could add a record to a sales log table. However, only if both sections of code succeed does the script itself succeed. If the removal of the inventory record or the addition of the sales record fails, the script itself fails. Both processes are rolled back: the deleted record, if it was removed, is added back into the database, and the sales record, if it was added, is removed from the sales log table. This ability to wrap several functions in a single transactional unit that succeeds or fails as a whole is an important improvement in the power of ASP applications. Previously, all transactions relied on database transaction support.

ASP application transactions are controlled by Windows 2000 COM+ Component Services or Windows NT's Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This piece of the BackOffice suite allows control over all database actions coded to use it. Support for transactional scripts is built into IIS and Personal Web Server and does not require any special setup. Without COM+ Component Services or, in ASP 2.0, MTS transactional support, your applications would have to track all database changes manually and roll back all database ...