Do you need to begin and end a transaction if all you are dealing with a read-only database, and are only ever retrieving objects from the store ?.

All the examples I've found seem to start and end a transaction even when doing just Queries. Is this always the case ?.

Aled

(As a test I tried doing a query without being in a transaction and it worked fine. However I am wondering if this a good pattern to follow)

I think it works fine as long as your not persisting anything.