Larry Johnson-473989 (10/15/2013)

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I overheard our DBA today (2013-10-17) telling a junior developer to NEVER use a TRY-CATCH block in stored procedures. He told her that it is a very inefficient way of creating a transaction and should not be used. He said it was only still available for "backward compatibility." Instead, he suggested she put a BEGIN TRANSACTION and END TRANSACTION around anything that would do an insert or update.

To my knowledge, TRY-CATCH was introduced in SQL 2005. I've been using it regularly as a best practice since about 2007, and this is the first time I've ever heard anyone say it should not be used.

Any opinions here? Is a TRY-CATCH block still a valid practice today?

(Part of the reason I'm obsessing over this is because he is pretty full of himself and also made the statement, "Trust me, I've been doing this for 10 years," to support his argument. That kind of statement drives me nuts.)

Thanks!