Hi, I'm looking for a description of the root of this error: "Transaction context in use by another session". I get it sometimes in one of my unittests so I can't provider repro code. But I wonder what is "by design" reason for the error.

I've found this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/asiatech/archive/2009/08/10/system-transaction-may-fail-in-multiple-thread-environment.aspx and also that: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff649002.aspx

But I can't understand what "Multiple threads sharing the same transaction in a transaction scope will cause the following exception: 'Transaction context in use by another session.' " means. All words are understandable but not the point. I actually can share a system transaction between threads. And there is even special mechanism for this - DependentTransaction class and Transaction.DependentClone method.

I'm trying to reproduce a usecase from the first post: 1. Main thread creates DTC transaction, receives DependentTransaction (created using Transaction.Current.DependentClone on the main thread 2. Child thread 1 enlists in this DTC transaction by creating a transaction scope based on the dependent transaction (passed via constructor) 3. Child thread 1 opens a connection 4. Child thread 2 enlists in DTC transaction by creating a transaction scope based on the dependent transaction (passed via constructor) 5. Child thread 2 opens a connection

with such code:

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Transactions;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;

public class Program
{
    private static string ConnectionString = "Initial Catalog=DB;Data Source=.;User ID=user;PWD=pwd;";

    public static void Main()
    {
        int MAX = 100;
        for(int i =0; i< MAX;i++)
        {
            using(var ctx = new TransactionScope())
            {
                var tx = Transaction.Current;
                // make the transaction distributed
                using (SqlConnection con1 = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
                using (SqlConnection con2 = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
                {
                    con1.Open();
                    con2.Open();
                }
                showSysTranStatus();

                DependentTransaction dtx = Transaction.Current.DependentClone(DependentCloneOption.BlockCommitUntilComplete);
                Thread t1 = new Thread(o => workCallback(dtx));
                Thread t2 = new Thread(o => workCallback(dtx));
                t1.Start();
                t2.Start();
                t1.Join();
                t2.Join();

                ctx.Complete();
            }
            trace("root transaction completes");
        }
    }
    private static void workCallback(DependentTransaction dtx)
    {
        using(var txScope1 = new TransactionScope(dtx))
        {
            using (SqlConnection con2 = new SqlConnection(ConnectionString))
            {
                con2.Open();
                trace("connection opened");
                showDbTranStatus(con2);
            }
            txScope1.Complete();
        }   
        trace("dependant tran completes");
    }
    private static void trace(string msg)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(Thread.CurrentThread.ManagedThreadId + " : " + msg);
    }
    private static void showSysTranStatus()
    {
        string msg;
        if (Transaction.Current != null)
            msg = Transaction.Current.TransactionInformation.DistributedIdentifier.ToString();
        else
            msg = "no sys tran";
        trace( msg );
    }

    private static void showDbTranStatus(SqlConnection con)
    {
        var cmd = con.CreateCommand();
        cmd.CommandText = "SELECT 1";
        var c = cmd.ExecuteScalar();
        trace("@@TRANCOUNT = " + c);
    }
}

It fails on Complete's call of root TransactionScope. But error is different: Unhandled Exception: System.Transactions.TransactionInDoubtException: The transaction is in doubt. ---> pired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

To sum up: I want to understand what "Transaction context in use by another session" means and how to reproduce it.