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Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs
book

Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs

by Arup Nanda, Steven Feuerstein
October 2005
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
454 pages
14h 44m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Oracle PL/SQL for DBAs

Autonomous Transactions

When you define a PL/SQL block (anonymous block, procedure, function, packaged procedure, packaged function, database trigger) as an autonomous transaction, you isolate the DML in that block from the caller’s transaction context. That block becomes an independent transaction that is started by another transaction, referred to as the main transaction .

Within the autonomous transaction block, the main transaction is suspended. You perform your SQL operations, commit or roll back those operations, and resume the main transaction. This flow of transaction control is illustrated in Figure 1-5.

Flow of transaction control among main, nested, and autonomous transactions
Figure 1-5. Flow of transaction control among main, nested, and autonomous transactions

There isn’t much involved in defining a PL/SQL block as an autonomous transaction. You simply include the following statement in your declaration section:

    PRAGMA AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION;

The pragma instructs the PL/SQL compiler to establish a PL/SQL block as autonomous or independent. For the purposes of the autonomous transaction, a PL/SQL block can be any of the following:

  • Top-level (but not nested) anonymous PL/SQL blocks

  • Functions and procedures, defined either in a package or as standalone programs

  • Methods (functions and procedures) of an object type

  • Database triggers

You can put the autonomous transaction pragma anywhere in the declaration section of your PL/SQL block. You would probably ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596005873Supplemental ContentErrata Page