[logicalmind]

Yes, this is exactly the type of boilerplate I am talking about. All those usings and try/catch blocks which add needless code. It is possible to compose all of this into an aspect which then decorates your methods. Maybe I'm not being clear, so here is what I mean. Say you have a method that does some work, but calls some other thing to do some auditing. The auditing is nice, but it failing shouldn't halt the world.

  [Transaction]
  DoYourBusinessWork() { ...; AlsoAudit(); }

  [Transaction(RequiresNew, NoRollbackFor(AuditException)]
  AlsoAudit() { ... }

The TransactionScope is handled in the aspect. Commit/Rollback is all handled there is well. There are not usings or exception handlings within your methods unless you want to handle those specifically.

[scarface74]

There should only be one using/try catch block on the highest level. All of the methods being called within that using block should just throw errors.

You could put the logic in attributes but I don’t consider a transaction a cross cutting concern. It would create a spooky action at a distance situation.

[logicalmind]

It's obviously highly dependent on the domain in which you work, but I would consider what you're saying to be a "business transaction" more than a "database transaction". If there is a 1:1 between the two then your way works. I tend to have situations where one business transaction is multiple database transactions. And the business transaction can succeed even if some of the underlying database transactions were to fail.