Epicor BPM TxScope: Standard vs In-Transaction Directives and When Functions Need a Transaction

How to choose and use transaction scope

1. 1Decide whether your change must roll back if the main save fails. If yes, use an In-Transaction directive; if you are only validating or sending a notification, Standard is enough.
2. 2In Method Directive Maintenance, set the directive type when creating it. It cannot always be changed afterward, so recreate if needed.
3. 3For your own writes in custom code, wrap them in a transaction scope block.
4. 4Call Complete on the scope only when every step succeeded. Leaving without Complete rolls back.
5. 5Keep the scope short. Do lookups before it, writes inside it.
6. 6Avoid calling slow services, email or web requests inside a transaction.
7. 7Test a failure case on purpose and confirm that data rolled back.

TxScope in custom code and functions

using (var txScope = IceContext.CreateDefaultTransactionScope())
{
    var rec = Db.UD01.Where(u => u.Company == Session.CompanyID && u.Key1 == "A").FirstOrDefault();
    if (rec != null)
    {
        rec.Number01 = rec.Number01 + 1;
        Db.Validate();
    }
    txScope.Complete();
}

Common pitfalls

• !Forgetting Complete, so the writes silently roll back.
• !Sending email or calling an API inside a transaction, then rolling back.
• !Running large searches inside an In-Transaction directive and blocking users.
• !Using a Standard post-processing directive for writes that must be atomic with the save.
• !Swallowing exceptions in custom code so the transaction commits a partial change.