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
characteristics, 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 omitted.
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)]