22-25 April 2026 
On Transactions and Atomic Operations
2015TL; DR
Transactions are critical when multiple changes need to be made entirely or not at all, but it’s rare to see transactions used at all in most production code. In this introductory session, we'll look at what transactions are and how they're used
Session Details
If there’s one thing that we, as SQL developers, don’t do, it’s use enough transactions. Transactions are critical when multiple changes need to be made entirely or not at all, but even given that, it’s rare to see transactions used at all in most production code.
In this session, we’ll look at what transactions are and why we should use them. We’ll explore the effects transactions have on locking and the transaction log. We’ll investigate methods of handling errors and undoing data modifications, and we’ll see why nested transactions are a lie.
In this session, we’ll look at what transactions are and why we should use them. We’ll explore the effects transactions have on locking and the transaction log. We’ll investigate methods of handling errors and undoing data modifications, and we’ll see why nested transactions are a lie.
3 things you'll get out of this session
Speakers
Gail Shaw's other proposed sessions for 2026
All about Indexes - Part 1 - 2026
All about Indexes - Part 2 - 2026
Identifying the worst performing queries in a DB, with Query Store - 2026
KQL for the SQL Professional - 2026
Parameter Sniffing vs Parameter Sensitive Plan Optimization - 2026
Transaction Log Internals, unplugged - 2026
Gail Shaw's previous sessions
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All about Indexes
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All about Indexes
Indexes are essential to good database performance, but it can be hard to decide what indexes to create. In this session we'll look at guidelines for index creation
Do's and don'ts of database corruption
In this session we'll look at the things you should and shouldn't be doing now, to protect yourself and your data against the risk of corruption and thing you should and shouldn't do should the database ever become corrupt.
Bad Plan! Sit!
In this session we'll look at the common causes of bad execution plans and examine options for resolving the problem, short term and long term.