Default Transaction Timeout

Question

I used to set Transaction timeouts by using TransactionOptions.Timeout, but have decided for ease of maintenance to use the config approach:

 <system.transactions>
    <defaultSettings timeout="00:01:00" />
  </system.transactions>

Of course, after putting this in, I wanted to test it was working, so reduced the timeout to 5 seconds, then ran a test that lasted longer than this - but the transaction does not appear to abort! If I adjust the test to set TransactionOptions.Timeout to 5 seconds, the test works as expected

After Investigating I think the problem appears to relate to TransactionOptions.Timeout, even though I'm no longer using it.

I still need to use TransactionOptions so I can set IsolationLevel, but I no longer set the Timeout value, if I look at this object after I create it, the timeout value is 00:00:00, which equates to infinity. Does this mean my value set in the config file is being ignored?

To summarise:

• Is it impossible to mix the config setting, and use of TransactionOptions
• If not, is there any way to extract the config setting at runtime, and use this to set the Timeout property
• [Edit] OR Set the default isolation-level without using TransactionOptions

Answer 1

To put my current thoughts down:

• It is impossible to mix the config setting, and use of TransactionOptions
• The only way to extract the config setting at runtime is to read the app.config as an XML file
• The default isolation-level can only be done via transaction options, or at the service-level in WCF using attributes

Answer 2

You can mix system.transaction configuration settings and the use of the TransactionOption class, but there are some things you need to be aware of.

If you use the TransactionOption and specify a Timeout value, that value will be used over the system.transactions/defaultTimeout value.

The above is the crux of the problem in your case I think. You are using the TransactionOption to specify the isolation level, and as a side effect you are getting an infinite Timeout value because infinite is the default Timeout value for TransactionOption if its not specified. Though, I'm not quite sure why that is...it would make sense to default to the default Transaction Timeout.

You can implement your own TransactionOptions helper class that includes defaults that are read from app.config (if found) or default to reasonable values for a TransactionOption class that can be used.

In any case, you can still limit this by using the system.transaction/machineSettings/maxTimeout value. This is an administrative setting and can only be configured through the machine.config. You'll get a ConfigurationException if you try it from app/web.config.

<system.transactions>
 <machineSettings maxTimeout="00:00:30" />
</system.transactions>

With the maxTimeout set, no matter what timeout value you specify, the maximum value will be limited to the maxTimeout value. The default maxTimeout is 00:10:00, or 10 minutes, so you wouldn't actually ever have an infinite timeout on a transaction.

You can also set the transaction IsolationLevel explicitly on the database connection you are using within the transaction. Something like this?

   var connectionString = "Server=.;Database=master;Trusted_Connection=True;";

            using (var scope = new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Required))
            {
                using (var conn = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
                {
                    conn.Open();
                    var sqlTransaction = conn.BeginTransaction(System.Data.IsolationLevel.Serializable);

                    // do database work
                    //
                    sqlTransaction.Commit();


                }

                // do other work..
                //

                scope.Complete();

            }

In your testing, you may need to make sure you rebuild so that the app.config is regenerated . In my testing, it appeared that I needed to terminate the *.vshost.exe process in order for it to pick up the system.transaction configuration setting change - though I feel that may have been a fluke. Just fyi..

HTH,

Zach

Answer 3

The config file setting is ignored when TransactionOptions are used. Creating a TransactionScope will, in most cases, create an instance of CommittableTransaction. The no arg constructor of CommittableTransaction will use the config file setting as its default timeout. TransactionScope constructors that take a TransactionOptions or TimeSpan will call one of the overloads of the CommittableTransaction class and not the no arg version. So if you want to use that value you have to grab it from the config file yourself.

When I ran into this I put the following code in a little TransactionOptionsFactory class.

Configuration configuration = ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration(ConfigurationUserLevel.None);
ConfigurationSectionGroup sectionGroup = configuration.GetSectionGroup("system.transactions");
DefaultSettingsSection defaultSettings = (DefaultSettingsSection) sectionGroup.Sections["defaultSettings"];
TransactionOptions options = new TransactionOptions();
options.Timeout = defaultSettings.Timeout;
options.IsolationLevel = IsolationLevel.ReadCommitted;

Answer 4

You can get the (validated) default timeout from the configuration using TransactionManager.DefaultTimeout.

TransactionOptions is a struct that encapsulates timeout and isolation level. When initializing a struct using the default constructor, it will always initialize the struct members to their default values:

TransactionOptions transactionOptions = new TransactionOptions();
transactionOptions.Timeout == default(TimeSpan); // TimeSpan.Zero
transactionOptions.IsolationLevel == default(IsolationLevel); // IsolationLevel.Serializable

If you want to specify an IsolationLevel and use the default timeout:

new TransactionOptions()
{
    IsolationLevel = IsolationLevel.Serializable, // Use whatever level you require
    Timeout = TransactionManager.DefaultTimeout
};