Question

Is there a way to implement transactions in code first without having to write stored procedures?

I have some scenarios where multi-table entries need to be created with unique guids before a final table entry can be created. Is this something I can code using EF alone?

Answer 1

DbContext.SaveChanges() method uses a transaction . So it is Atomic and you don’t want to use stored procedures. The unitOfWork patter is implemented in EF itself to accomplish this.
But let’s say you are using two DbContext instances to d your job , then you need to wrap your work with a transaction scope like this,

using (var scpe=new TransactionScope()){
...
context1.SaveChanges();
....
context.SaveChanges();

scope.Complete();
}

SaveChanges operates within a transaction. SaveChanges will roll back
that transaction and throw an exception if any of the dirty
ObjectStateEntry objects cannot be persisted.

See the documentation