What causes TRANSACTION_ABORTED?

A statement within an explicit BEGIN TRANSACTION block failed, leaving the transaction in an aborted state. The session exceeded the idle transaction timeout, causing the transaction to be automatically aborted by the server. A constraint violation or type error within a transaction caused the entire transaction to be marked as failed

How do I fix TRANSACTION_ABORTED?

Step 1: Issue ROLLBACK TRANSACTION to clear the aborted transaction state before executing any further SQL in the same session.. Step 2: Review the previous statement that triggered the abort — check for constraint violations, type mismatches, or timeout conditions.. Step 3: Wrap transaction logic in a try/except block and issue ROLLBACK in the exception handler to keep the connection in a usable state.. Step 4: If the abort was caused by an idle timeout, reduce the transaction scope to keep it short and avoid leaving connections idle while holding a transaction.

High severityexecution

Power BI Refresh Error:
TRANSACTION_ABORTED

What does this error mean?

A Databricks SQL transaction was aborted and all subsequent statements in the same session are rejected until a ROLLBACK TRANSACTION is issued to clear the aborted state.

Common causes

1A statement within an explicit BEGIN TRANSACTION block failed, leaving the transaction in an aborted state
2The session exceeded the idle transaction timeout, causing the transaction to be automatically aborted by the server
3A constraint violation or type error within a transaction caused the entire transaction to be marked as failed

How to fix it

1Step 1: Issue ROLLBACK TRANSACTION to clear the aborted transaction state before executing any further SQL in the same session.
2Step 2: Review the previous statement that triggered the abort — check for constraint violations, type mismatches, or timeout conditions.
3Step 3: Wrap transaction logic in a try/except block and issue ROLLBACK in the exception handler to keep the connection in a usable state.
4Step 4: If the abort was caused by an idle timeout, reduce the transaction scope to keep it short and avoid leaving connections idle while holding a transaction.

Frequently asked questions

Does this affect auto-commit single-statement queries?

No. Single-statement queries in auto-commit mode do not leave the session in an aborted state if they fail. TRANSACTION_ABORTED only occurs when using explicit BEGIN TRANSACTION blocks.

Can I reconnect instead of issuing ROLLBACK?

Yes. Starting a new session (reconnecting) is equivalent to rolling back and is often the simplest recovery path for batch jobs that create fresh connections per run.