Definition: An autonomous transaction is an independent transaction started by another transaction, the main transaction. Autonomous transactions suspend the main transaction, do SQL operations, commit or roll back those operations, then resume the main transaction. Once started, an autonomous transaction is fully independent. It shares no locks, resources, or commit-dependencies with the main transaction.
Scenario : You can use autonomous transaction in your report for writing error messages in your database tables.
Example
Scenario : You can use autonomous transaction in your report for writing error messages in your database tables.
Example
CREATE TABLE at_test (
id NUMBER NOT NULL,
description VARCHAR2(50) NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO at_test (id, description) VALUES (1, 'Description for 1');
INSERT INTO at_test (id, description) VALUES (2, 'Description for 2');
SELECT * FROM at_test;
ID DESCRIPTION
---------- --------------------------------------------------
1 Description for 1
2 Description for 2
2 rows selected.
Next, we insert another 8 rows using an anonymous block declared as an autonomous transaction, which contains a commit statement.
DECLARE
PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;
BEGIN
FOR i IN 3 .. 10 LOOP
INSERT INTO at_test (id, description)
VALUES (i, 'Description for ' || i);
END LOOP;
COMMIT;
END;
/
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SELECT * FROM at_test;
ID DESCRIPTION
---------- --------------------------------------------------
1 Description for 1
2 Description for 2
3 Description for 3
4 Description for 4
5 Description for 5
6 Description for 6
7 Description for 7
8 Description for 8
9 Description for 9
10 Description for 10
10 rows selected.
As expected, we now have 10 rows in the table. If we now issue a rollback statement we get the following result.
ROLLBACK;
SELECT * FROM at_test;
ID DESCRIPTION
---------- --------------------------------------------------
3 Description for 3
4 Description for 4
5 Description for 5
6 Description for 6
7 Description for 7
8 Description for 8
9 Description for 9
10 Description for 10
8 rows selected.
The 2 rows inserted by our current session (transaction) have been rolled back, while the rows inserted by the autonomous transactions remain. The presence of the PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION compiler directive made the anonymous block run in its own transaction, so the internal commit statement did not affect the calling session.