With snapshot isolation, an update conflict can occur when a transaction sees an old version of a row and tries to update or delete it. When this happens, the server gives an error as soon as it detects the conflict. For a committed change, this is when the update or delete is attempted. For an uncommitted change, the update or delete blocks and the server returns the error when the change commits.

Update conflicts cannot occur when using readonly-statement-snapshot because updatable statements run at a non-snapshot isolation, and always see the most recent version of the database. Therefore, the readonly-statement-snapshot isolation level has many of the benefits of snapshot isolation, without requiring large changes to an application originally designed to run at another isolation level. When using the readonly-statement-snapshot isolation level: