>Now for the stickler - SQL Server will maintain exclusive locks until the transaction is terminated. If your process takes a long time, you may want to run it during down or slow time.
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If the machine that runs this job locks up for some reason, will SQL server know to terminate the transaction/connection on its own and free those records? What about transaction log file? Isn't it going to be filled up pretty quickly as well since it won't be able to truncate due to those locks? BTW, I do have "Truncate Log on Checkpoint" turned on for this particular database.