COMMIT statement

Use this statement to make changes to the database permanent, or to terminate a user-defined transaction.

Syntax 1
COMMIT [ WORK ]
Syntax 2
COMMIT TRAN[SACTION] [ transaction-name ]
Parameters
Remarks

Syntax 1   The COMMIT statement ends a transaction and makes all changes made during this transaction permanent in the database.

Data definition statements all carry out a commit automatically. For information, see the Side effects listing for each SQL statement.

The COMMIT statement fails if the database server detects any invalid foreign keys. This makes it impossible to end a transaction with any invalid foreign keys. Usually, foreign key integrity is checked on each data manipulation operation. However, if the database option wait_for_commit is set On or a particular foreign key was defined with a CHECK ON COMMIT option, the database server delays integrity checking until the COMMIT statement is executed.

Syntax 2   You can use BEGIN TRANSACTION and COMMIT TRANSACTION statements in pairs to construct nested transactions. Nested transactions are similar to savepoints. When executed as the outermost of a set of nested transactions, the statement makes changes to the database permanent. When executed inside a transaction, the COMMIT TRANSACTION statement decreases the nesting level of transactions by one. When transactions are nested, only the outermost COMMIT makes the changes to the database permanent.

Syntax 2 is a Transact-SQL extension.

Permissions

None.

Side effects

Closes all cursors except those opened WITH HOLD.

Deletes all rows of declared temporary tables on this connection, unless they were declared using ON COMMIT PRESERVE ROWS.

See also
Standards and compatibility
  • SQL/2003   Syntax 1 is a core feature. Syntax 2 is a Transact-SQL extension.

Example

The following statement commits the current transaction:

COMMIT;

The following Transact-SQL batch reports successive values of @@trancount as 0, 1, 2, 1, 0.

PRINT @@trancount
BEGIN TRANSACTION
PRINT @@trancount
BEGIN TRANSACTION
PRINT @@trancount
COMMIT TRANSACTION
PRINT @@trancount
COMMIT TRANSACTION
PRINT @@trancount
go