Question

I’ve got a large T-SQL script that opens and closes a few transactions. I have read that committing a batch with a GO statement effectively clears all variables out from it’s scope.

Given the script below, will @MyImportantVariable be defined after the transaction is committed?

Is this an issue, if so, how do I overcome it?

DECLARE @MyImportantVariable INT;
SET @MyImportantVariable = 42;

DECLARE @Counter INT;
SET @Counter = 0

DECLARE UpdateGarmentCursor CURSOR FAST_FORWARD
FOR
SELECT
        MyColumn
    FROM
        MyWonderfulTable

BEGIN TRANSACTION
    WHILE @@TRAN_STATUS = 0 
    BEGIN
        -- Do interesting work in here
    SET @Counter = @Counter +1
    IF(@Counter>10) 
    BEGIN
        COMMIT TRANSACTION
            -- What happens here to @MyImportantVariable?
           SET @Counter = 0
        BEGIN TRANSACTION
    END
END

-- Close the transaction one last time
COMMIT TRANSACTION

Answer 1

The variable will still exist.

Your example contains no GO commands, only transactions.

GO signals the end of a batch… batches and transactions are two different things entirely.

From MSDN:

GO is not a Transact-SQL statement; it is a command recognized by the
sqlcmd and osql utilities and SQL Server Management Studio Code
editor.

SQL Server utilities interpret GO as a signal that they should send
the current batch of Transact-SQL statements to an instance of SQL
Server. The current batch of statements is composed of all statements
entered since the last GO, or since the start of the ad hoc session or
script if this is the first GO.