Transaction Isolation levels in SQL Server:

To ensure quality of your data in RDBMS transaction isolation level is important.

This article will cover the five transaction isolation settings - READ UNCOMMITTED, READ COMMITTED (locking), READ COMMITTED (snapshot), REPEATABLE READ and SERIALIZATION.

Syntax:

SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION
LEVEL
    {READ UNCOMMITTED
    | READ COMMITTED
    | REPEATABLE READ
    | SNAPSHOT
    | SERIALIZABLE
    }
[ ; ]
 

READ UNCOMMITTED

Specifies that statements can read rows that have been modified by other transactions but not yet committed.

 For more info ….http://www.codechef4u.com/post/2015/04/05/read-uncommitted

READ COMMITTED:

This is the default isolation level and means selects will only return committed data. This prevents dirty reads.

For more info ….http://www.codechef4u.com/post/2015/04/05/read-committed

REPEATABLE READ:

Specifies that statements cannot read data that has been modified but not yet committed by other transactions and that no other transactions can modify data that has been read by the current transaction until the current transaction completes.

 For more info ….http://www.codechef4u.com/post/2015/04/07/repeatable-read1

 SERIALIZABLE:

 This isolation level takes Repeatable Read and adds the guarantee that no new data will be added eradicating the chance of getting Phantom Reads.

For more info ….http://www.codechef4u.com/post/2015/04/07/serializable

SNAPSHOT:

Except when a database is being recovered, SNAPSHOT transactions do not request locks when reading data. SNAPSHOT transactions reading data do not block other transactions from writing data. Transactions writing data do not block SNAPSHOT transactions from reading data.

To use the snapshot isolation level you need to enable it on the database by running the following command

Syntax: 

ALTER DATABASE DatabseName

SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON

 Example:

ALTER DATABASE LocalTest 

SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON

--Query1  

BEGIN TRAN 

SELECT * FROM Employee 

WAITFOR DELAY '00:00:10' 

SELECT * FROM Employee 

ROLLBACK

--Query2

INSERT INTO Employee(EmployeeName,Country,PrimaryLanguage,CompanyPlant,ManagerId)

VALUES ('Anushka', 'England','English','London',5)