The explicit BEGIN TRAN, COMMIT TRAN in the batch delete is unnecessary, SQL will by default commit each individual statement, unless you put a transaction around the entire process. Totally agree about using a clustered key for batching (or a non-clustered index on a heap).

Here's my simpler version of the batch delete (for both SQL 2005 and 2000):

--SQL 2005+

DECLARE @i INT

SET @i = 1

WHILE @i > 0

BEGIN

DELETE TOP (10000) FROM dbo.SuperBigTable

WHERE RecordID < 12345

SELECT @i = @@ROWCOUNT

END

--SQL 2000

DECLARE @i INT

SET @i = 1

SET ROWCOUNT 10000

WHILE @i > 0

BEGIN

DELETE * FROM dbo.SuperBigTable

WHERE RecordID < 12345

SELECT @i = @@ROWCOUNT

END

SET ROWCOUNT 0

Had to use this again this morning, a user tried to delete 88m rows out of a 90m row table, all in one statement. I told him not to do that 🙂