You can nest transactions within other transactions. When you nest begin transaction and commit transaction statements, the outermost pair actually begin and commit the transaction. The inner pairs only track the nesting level.
SAP ASE does not commit the transaction until the commit transaction that matches the outermost begin transaction is issued. Normally, this transaction “nesting” occurs as stored procedures or triggers that contain begin/commit pairs call each other.
The @@trancount global variable keeps track of the current nesting level for transactions. An initial implicit or explicit begin transaction sets @@trancount to 1. Each subsequent begin transaction increments @@trancount, and a commit transaction decrements it. Firing a trigger also increments @@trancount, and the transaction begins with the statement that causes the trigger to fire. Nested transactions are not committed unless @@trancount equals 0.
For example, the following nested groups of statements are not committed by SAP ASE until the final commit transaction:
begin tran select @@trancount /* @@trancount = 1 */ begin tran select @@trancount /* @@trancount = 2 */ begin tran select @@trancount /* @@trancount = 3 */ commit tran commit tran commit tran select @@trancount /* @@ trancount = 0 */
When you nest a rollback transaction statement without including a transaction or savepoint name, it rolls back to the outermost begin transaction statement and cancels the transaction.