Re: Postgres config file: autocommit = off

On Sun, 1 Jun 2003, Rasmus Resen Amossen wrote:

> >We have been there, done that, and decided it was a bad idea. I suggest
> >you do a little reading in the mail list archives.
>
> I have searched the lists archives for the words "commit", "autocommit" and
> "transaction" but couldn't find any discussion on wheter to give a database
> administrator the option to turn automatic commit off was is a good idea or
> not (not requirering the user to enter BEGIN; to start a transaction).
>
> Do you know the title of the thread or some more details on where to find
> the arguments? I look forward to read that discussion. :-)
>
> Personally I am managing a database for approx. 500 people which are all
> VERY dependant on the correctnes of the database. Sometimes, when we do
> manually fixes in the database, it takes a series of statements before our
> data mangeling leaves the databases in a consistent state again. Therefor it
> is a quite serious problem for us if we forget the BEGIN-word (which happens
> quite often :-( ), so we could really use the config file option mentioned.
>

I can't remember the discussion very clearly but I seem to recall that it was
some sort of issue with some, but not all, of the interfaces.

However, ignoring that you can set autocommit to off by altering the user. For
example if the user you do the fixing as as described above is called dba_1
then if you do:

alter user dba_1 set autocommit to off;

whenever you log in as the dba_1 user you will find that the autocommit is
turned off.

--
Nigel J. Andrews