START
TRANSACTION(7) SQL Commands START TRANSACTION(7)
NAME
START TRANSACTION - start a transaction block
SYNOPSIS
START TRANSACTION [ transaction_mode [, ...] ]
where transaction_mode is one of:
ISOLATION LEVEL { SERIALIZABLE | REPEATABLE READ | READ COMMITTED | READ UNCOMMITTED }
READ WRITE | READ ONLY
DESCRIPTION
This command begins a new transaction block. If the isolation level or read/write mode is specified, the new transaction has those charac-
teristics, as if SET TRANSACTION [set_transaction(7)] was executed. This is the same as the BEGIN [begin(7)] command.
PARAMETERS
Refer to SET TRANSACTION [set_transaction(7)] for information on the meaning of the parameters to this statement.
COMPATIBILITY
In the standard, it is not necessary to issue START TRANSACTION to start a transaction block: any SQL command implicitly begins a block.
PostgreSQL's behavior can be seen as implicitly issuing a COMMIT after each command that does not follow START TRANSACTION (or BEGIN), and
it is therefore often called ``autocommit''. Other relational database systems might offer an autocommit feature as a convenience.
The SQL standard requires commas between successive transaction_modes, but for historical reasons PostgreSQL allows the commas to be omit-
ted.
See also the compatibility section of SET TRANSACTION [set_transaction(7)].
SEE ALSO
BEGIN [begin(7)], COMMIT [commit(7)], ROLLBACK [rollback(7)], SAVEPOINT [savepoint(7)], SET TRANSACTION [set_transaction(7)]
SQL - Language Statements 2010-05-14 START TRANSACTION(7)