bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/performance/use-tryfunction-for-error-catching-not-rollback.md

bc-version	domain	keywords	technologies	countries	application-area
all	performance	try-function try-method error-handling rollback atomic exception get-last-error session-buffer	al	w1	all

Use [TryFunction] for error catching, Codeunit.Run for atomic rollback

Description

[TryFunction] lets a caller catch an error, but database changes made before that error are not rolled back. The attribute catches; it does not unwind transaction state. This is the critical distinction from Codeunit.Run, which can provide an atomic rollback boundary (see codeunit-run-as-atomic-sub-operation.md). On Business Central on-premises, writes inside a try method are blocked by default unless DisableWriteInsideTryFunctions is set to false; SaaS does not provide that server setting.

Best Practice

Reach for [TryFunction] when you want to catch a failure without unwinding the transaction — for example, third-party interop or parsing whose error you intend to translate. When writes must either fully apply or fully revert, use Codeunit.Run instead. The two primitives solve different problems: one catches errors, the other bounds a rollback scope.

Use [TryFunction] sparingly. Each caught error writes to the session-wide GetLastErrorText and GetLastErrorCallStack buffers, and every subsequent catch overwrites the earlier state — a helper that reads GetLastErrorText later may see a different error than the one it intended to inspect. Prefer explicit checks (non-throwing predicates, guard conditions, upfront validation) for operations with predictable failure modes; reserve [TryFunction] for genuinely unpredictable failures such as network calls, third-party interop, or evaluation of user-supplied expressions. When you do catch, read GetLastErrorText immediately after the failed call, and call ClearLastError before the call if an earlier catch in the same scope could have left state behind — per the platform reference, "If you call the GetLastErrorText method immediately after you call the ClearLastError method, then an empty string is returned."

See sample: use-tryfunction-for-error-catching-not-rollback.good.al.

Anti Pattern

Wrapping database writes in [TryFunction] and expecting successful writes before the error to roll back. They remain, the caller receives false, and partially applied state can escape. Defensive sprinkling is also unsafe: every catch overwrites the session error buffer and can hide the failure a later helper intended to inspect.

See sample: use-tryfunction-for-error-catching-not-rollback.bad.al.

See also

microsoft/knowledge/error-handling/ignored-tryfunction-return-disables-try-semantics.md owns the separate call-site rule that a try method's Boolean result must be consumed.