The COMMIT statement makes all changes permanent.

You should use the COMMIT statement after groups of statements that make sense together. For example, if you want to transfer money from one customer's account to another, you should add money to one customer's account, then delete it from the other's, and then commit, since in this case it does not make sense to leave your database with less or more money than it started with.

You can instruct Interactive SQL to commit your changes automatically by setting the auto_commit option to On. This is an Interactive SQL option. When auto_commit is set to On, Interactive SQL issues a COMMIT statement after every insert, update, and delete statement you make. This can slow down performance considerably. Therefore, it is a good idea to leave the auto_commit option set to Off.

 See also