One of the things I can tack on to this is if I'm having to run queries manually to make changes to the data, I'll start a tran. After each step of the process, I'll verify that the data looks as it should. If it doesn't, I can roll everything back. Once I get to the end of the process, if everything is as it should be, I commit the tran.

It should be noted that in cases like this I've been having to make changes to data in production (don't ask), and at the time the app is down (usually because the data is hosed). As a result, I'm not worried about blocking others from the resources... got to get things fixed that the app broke!

K. Brian Kelley

bk@warpdrivedesign.org

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/bkelley/