I'm trying to get SQL Server 2005 to CREATE DATABASE using twisted. However, SQL Server won't allow you to run CREATE DATABASE within a transaction (apparently, it's not something sql server can roll back, which seems sensible). Which means that the following code results in an error. Is there a way to turn transactions off for a query? @defer.inlineCallbacks def test_simple_create(): try: password = "xxx" connection_string = "Driver={SQL Native Client}; Server=(local); UID=sa; PWD=%s;" % password db = adbapi.ConnectionPool("pyodbc", connection_string, cp_noisy=True) cmd = """CREATE DATABASE atest ON (NAME=atest, FILENAME='c:\temp\atest', SIZE=64MB) LOG ON (NAME=atestlog, FILENAME='c:\temp\atestlog', SIZE=64MB)""" yield db.runOperation(cmd) except Exception, e: print e finally: db.close() reactor.stop() if __name__ == "__main__": from twisted.python import log import sys test_simple_create() log.startLogging(sys.stdout) reactor.run() === 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-] Log opened. 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-] adbapi connecting: pyodbc ('Driver={SQL Native Client}; Server=(local); UID=sa; PWD=xxx;',) 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-] ('42000', '[42000] [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]CREATE DATABASE statement not allowed within multi-statement transaction. (226) (SQLExecDirectW)') 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-] adbapi closing: pyodbc 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-] Main loop terminated. 2010-03-18 09:28:45-0500 [-]