Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

THROW Statement

The THROW statement introduced in SQL Server 2012 can be used to raise an error condition and transfer execution to a CATCH block of a TRY...CATCH construct in SQL Server 2012. Before we get into examples of using the THROW statement, let’s first review the use of TRY...CATCH construct, which was introduced in SQL Server 2005.

The TRY...CATCH construct can be used within T-SQL code to provide a more graceful mechanism for exception handling than was available in previous versions of SQL Server. In versions prior to 2005, error handling was usually done by checking @@ERROR after each SQL statement and often using the GOTO statement to branch to an error-handling routine.

A TRY...CATCH construct consists of two parts: a TRY block ...