Question

I want to set SET XACT_ABORT ON in a SQL Server 2008R2 stored procedure with a transaction, so do it in a creation script:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
SET XACT_ABORT ON
GO

CREATE PROCEDURE MyProc
AS
BEGIN TRAN  
    ... 
IF @@ERROR <> 0
BEGIN
    GOTO Done
END 
    ... 
IF @@ERROR <> 0
BEGIN
    GOTO Done
END 
COMMIT TRAN     
Done:
IF @@ERROR <> 0
BEGIN
    ROLLBACK TRAN
END
GO

After successful creation, I check the transaction by clicking “Modify” stored procedure option and in a generated ALTER PROCEDURE script I don’t see SET XACT_ABORT ON line:

SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

ALTER PROCEDURE MyProc
AS
BEGIN TRAN
...

Where am I wrong or what is the trick? How to correctly define SET XACT_ABORT ON?

Answer 1

You normally set xact_abort as part of the body of the stored procedure:

CREATE PROCEDURE MyProc
AS
SET XACT_ABORT ON
BEGIN TRAN  
....

There are two “special” settings that are remembered from the session that created the procedure. Explanation from MSDN:

Stored procedures execute with the SET settings specified at execute
time except for SET ANSI_NULLS and SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER. Stored
procedures specifying SET ANSI_NULLS or SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER use the
setting specified at stored procedure creation time. If used inside a
stored procedure, any SET setting is ignored.

So when you create a stored procedure, SQL Server copies the QUOTED_IDENTIFIER option from the connection to the procedure definition. The goal is that someone else with a different QUOTED_IDENTIFIER setting still gets the behavior the author of the procedure intended.

The same is not true for XACT_ABORT.