Josephine Bush answers a team member’s question:
This came up one day at my work when a developer was using it. I hadn’t used it before and thought I’d better check it out. It’s off by default in SQL server, but why would you use it?
Click through for the tl;dr version, followed by a more thorough explanation. I wouldn’t set XACT_ABORT on by default, but there have been plenty of instances in which I’ve wanted to handle a lengthier series of operations as an all-or-nothing job, and this is a great way to do it.