Transaction Work

If a database has some form of transaction logging, then a series of data maintenance statements may be performed in a single transaction. There are three transaction work statements:

BEGIN WORK

This must be issued before a transaction sequence starts.

COMMIT WORK

This closes the transaction sequence and commits all the changes to the database.

ROLLBACK WORK

This closes the transaction sequence, ignoring the changes to the database. However, it does not ignore all statements. If database definition statements that alter the number and names of tables, the number and names of columns, data-types and indexes can be executed correctly, they are committed and are not rolled back.

During a dbaccess/isql session, if any DDL statements are issued (eg, a CREATE TABLE statement) or DML on databases with logging, and no BEGIN WORK transaction has been either started and completed around such statements, dbaccess/isql will prompt the user with the following menu options on leaving the session:

Commit Rollback

Once the required option has been chosen, the DBMS will be informed to act accordingly and the session will be terminated.