By default, the BDE provides implicit transaction control for your applications. When an application is under implicit transaction control, a separate transaction is used for each record in a dataset that is written to the underlying database. Implicit transactions guarantee both a minimum of record update conflicts and a consistent view of the database. On the other hand, because each row of data written to a database takes place in its own transaction, implicit transaction control can lead to excessive network traffic and slower application performance. Also, implicit transaction control will not protect logical operations that span more than one record. 

If you explicitly control transactions, you can choose the most effective times to start, commit, and roll back your transactions. When you develop applications in a multi-user environment, particularly when your applications run against a remote SQL server, you should control transactions explicitly. 

There are two mutually exclusive ways to control transactions explicitly in a BDE-based database application:

• Use the database component to control transactions. The main advantage to using the methods and properties of a database component is that it provides a clean, portable application that is not dependent on a particular database or server. This type of transaction control is supported by all database connection components, and described in Managing transactions.
• Use passthrough SQL in a query component to pass SQL statements directly to remote SQL or ODBC servers. The main advantage to passthrough SQL is that you can use the advanced transaction management capabilities of a particular database server, such as schema caching. To understand the advantages of your server's transaction management model, see your database server documentation.

When working with local databases, you can only use the database component to create explicit transactions (local databases do not support passthrough SQL). However, there are limitations to using local transactions. For more information on using local transactions, see Using Local Transactions.