Is there a way to test whether DELETE will fail due to constraints?

I'd like to be able to predict whether a DELETE will run into a constraint violation, without actually performing the delete.

What are my options for doing this? Is there a simple way to do a "dry run" of a DELETE?

We need to run a batch of several DELETEs in separate transactions. If one fails, the others are already committed. (Bad design from the start, I know, but it's not my application, and it's not changing.) The best workaround at the moment sounds like doing a dry check to see if the DELETEs will fail.

I'm trying to make sure they all succeed, or none of them succeed.

If your goal is to process all deletes only if they all succeed, why not just use TRY/CATCH:

BEGIN TRANSACTION;
BEGIN TRY
  DELETE #1;
  DELETE #2;
  DELETE #3;
  COMMIT TRANSACTION;
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
  ROLLBACK TRANSACTION;
END CATCH

If the goal is to allow all successful deletes to succeed even if one or more will fail, then you can use individual TRY/CATCH, e.g.

BEGIN TRY
  DELETE #1;
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
  PRINT 1;
END CATCH

BEGIN TRY
  DELETE #2;
END TRY
BEGIN CATCH
  PRINT 1;
END CATCH

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#23041, answer score: 27