Now, a situation has come up where I'd like to create another sub-component
(call it "component B") from within component A.  Thing is, component B also
has it's transaction attributes set to "Requires New".  It does basically
what component A does-- creates child components whose transactional
attributes are set to "Requires", etc.

Component B usually stands alone, like component A, but a situation has come
up where it would be very nice to have "A" create an instance of "B" and
have "B" do it's thing.  Sorry for the confusing notation here.

The question I have is, can I nest these transactions in Visual Basic?  If
component B's transaction is rolled back, will it also roll back component
A's transaction?  Or are things such that the two transactions are
completely separate, and just forget about tying them in together, 'cause it
isn't possible?  I've never tried it before, and was wondering what the
rules might be, if I'm setting myself up for trouble here.  Thanks for any
and all advice.

No, you can't perform nested transactions, the transactions are completely
separate: it is possible for B to fail and rollback but A to continue
processing and commit. What you could do, is to check the return values of
your method calls to B and abort the transaction in A if one fails. If you
really want a failure in B to abort your transaction in A, why not make B
just "Require" and transaction, rather than "Requires New"? If you want it
one way sometimes and another on different occasions, why not wrap the
method implementation in a VB Module Sub/Function and create two objects
with methods that call this common implementation, one object "Requires TX",
and one "Requires New TX"?

Regards,

Ade.

-Jim

Dim C as Adodb.Connection
Set C=New Adodb.Connection
C.Open CONNECTSTRING

C.Execute "BEGIN TRAN"
C.Execute "SAVE TRAN A"
C.Execute "UPDATE TABLE1 SET X=1"
C.Execute "SAVE TRAN B"
C.Execute "UPDATE TABLE1 SET X=2"
C.Execute "SAVE TRAN C"
C.Execute "UPDATE TABLE1 SET X=3"
C.Execute "ROLLBACK TRAN B"
C.Execute "COMMIT TRAN"
Set rs=new Adodb.recordset
rs.open "SELECT X FROM TABLE1", C
debug.print rs!X

The resultant output will be 1.

SAVE TRAN LABEL and ROLLBACK TRAN LABEL can be used to roll back selective
portions of a transaction