Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Programming by Example

Recursive Triggers

If a trigger defined in the Products table modifies data in the Employees table, and the Employees table has a trigger that in turn modifies the Products table, the trigger defined in the Products table will fire again. This situation is called indirect recursion, because a single statement forces multiple executions of the same trigger, through the execution of other triggers. This is a special case of nested triggers, and everything said about it in the preceding section can be applied to this case.

In some scenarios, it is possible to have direct recursion, when a table has a trigger that modifies some data in the table again. In this case, by default, SQL Server will not fire the trigger again, avoiding this direct ...