Snapshot Isolation Level in SQL Server - What, Why and How - Part 1

Snapshot Isolation level was introduced in SQL Server 2005 and has been available ever since. Snapshot isolation levels improve performance but there are couple of things to take into consideration when using this feature. Some people use it frequently as it minimizes blocking and improves performance/concurrency without knowing its impact on maintaining versions in tempdb, whereas some people stay away from it because of this extra overhead. Some people get confused about the two variants of snapshot isolation level (Read Committed Snapshot Isolation (RCSI) and Snapshot Isolation (SI)) and use one where the other is needed or vice versa.  In this article, I am going to discuss what snapshot isolation levels are, their variants, why and when we should use them and how we should start using this feature with examples, for more information click here.