What is Exception Handling?
Exception handling in SQL Server is the ability to deal with errors that occur or can occur on a database. These errors are called exceptions.
To assist you with handling exceptions thrown by your SQL statements, you can start with a section as follows:
Syntax
The syntax is very similar to try-catch in programming languages.
BEGIN TRY
--
-- Your Code that can throw an exception
--
END TRY
-- Don't include any SQL statements here
BEGIN CATCH
--
-- Handle the exception here
--
END CATCH
In case your code can throw an exception, include your normal code in a try block. If an error occurs in the try block, you can use the catch block to display a message.
Note. A catch block is executed only if an exception is generated in the try block.
Example
BEGIN TRY
DECLARE @Number tinyint
SET @Number = 50000;
SELECT @Number AS Number
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
PRINT 'There is an error in your code' --This will be printed in output message window
PRINT ERROR_MESSAGE(); -- This will print the type of error occurred
END CATCH
To give you a message related to the error, SQL provides the ERROR_MESSAGE() function.
Diagram
![message1.gif]()
On the other hand, if no error occurs in the try block, that try block executes, but when it ends, the execution skips the catch block and continues execution with code below the END CATCH line, if any.
Summary
I hope this blog clears you up with a try-catch in SQL Server.