You are the middle writing file and the operating system crashes

Chapter 8

•� Atomicity: Either all of a transaction happens or none of it happens.

•� Consistency: A transaction takes the database from one consistent state to the next.

Transaction Control Statements

You don’t need a “begin transaction” statement in Oracle. A transaction implicitly begins with the first statement that modifies data (the first statement that gets a TX lock). You can explicitly begin a transaction using SET TRANSACTION or the DBMS_TRANSACTION package, but it is not a necessary step, unlike in some other databases. Issuing either a COMMIT or ROLLBACK statement explicitly ends a transaction.

You should always explicitly terminate your transactions with a COMMIT or ROLLBACK; otherwise, the tool or environment you’re using will pick one or the other for you. If you exit your SQL*Plus session normally, without committing or rolling back, SQL*Plus assumes you wish to commit your work and it does so. If you just exit from a Pro*C program, on the other hand, an implicit rollback takes place. Never rely on implicit behavior, as it could change in the future. Always explicitly COMMIT or ROLLBACK your transactions.

■Note as an example of something changing in the future, sQL*plus in oracle 11g release 2 and above contains a

•� ROLLBACK: To use this statement’s simplest form, you just issue ROLLBACK. Again, you could be more verbose and say ROLLBACK WORK, but the two are equivalent. A rollback ends your transaction and undoes any uncommitted changes. It does this by reading information stored in the rollback/undo segments (going forward I’ll refer to these exclusively as undo segments, the favored terminology for Oracle 10g and later) and restoring the database blocks to the state they were before your transaction began.

•� SAVEPOINT: A SAVEPOINT allows you to create a marked point within a transaction. You may have multiple SAVEPOINTs within a single transaction.