There is no MTS object context (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004E004)

System.EnterpriseServices.ServiceDomain gives you an easy to implement distributed transactions. However, we saw a following exception happened intermittently when the ASP.Net pages are switched to run under .Net 2.0.

    System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException was unhandled
      Message="There is no MTS object context (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004E004)"
      Source="mscorlib"
      ErrorCode=-2147164156
      StackTrace:
           at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)
           at System.EnterpriseServices.ServiceDomain.Leave()

Source code has the issue:

        
    public class AspPage: System.Web.UI.Page
    {    
        protected AspPage()
            : base()
        {
            ServiceConfig config = new ServiceConfig(); 
            config.Transaction = TransactionOption.Required; 
            ServiceDomain.Enter(config);        
        }
        
        protected override void OnUnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnLoad(e);
            ServiceDomain.Leave();  //Throws "There is no MTS object context" exception 
        }
    }

We did some experiments and found that once we move ServiceDomain.Enter into OnLoad, the problem dispears. It seems that .Net 2.0 has a bug or has changed some threading behaviors. A rule of thumb is only call ServiceDomain.Enter from a method or one of the Page events (for example, Page_Load, Page_Init, and so on), and do not call it at construction time.

Problem solved:

        
    public class AspPage: System.Web.UI.Page
    {    
        protected AspPage()
            : base()
        {
        }

        protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            ServiceConfig config = new ServiceConfig(); 
            config.Transaction = TransactionOption.Required; 
            ServiceDomain.Enter(config);        

            base.OnLoad(e);
        }
        
        protected override void OnUnLoad(EventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnUnLoad(e);
            ServiceDomain.Leave();   
        }
    }

There is no MTS object context (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8004E004)

See also