SQL in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

START TRANSACTION Statement

The START TRANSACTION statement allows you to perform all the functions of SET TRANSACTION while also initiating a new transaction.

Platform	Command
MySQL	Supported, with limitations
Oracle	Not supported
PostgreSQL	Not supported; use BEGIN TRANSACTION instead
SQL Server	Not supported; use BEGIN TRANSACTION instead

SQL2003 Syntax

START TRANSACTION [READ ONLY | READ WRITE]
   [ISOLATION LEVEL {READ COMMITTED | READ UNCOMMITTED |
      REPEATABLE READ | SERIALIZABLE}]
   [DIAGNOSTIC SIZE int]

Keywords

READ ONLY

Sets the next upcoming transaction as a read-only transaction. Once the next transaction is complete, transaction behavior reverts to the default settings.

READ WRITE

Sets the next upcoming transaction so it may perform transactions that read and write data.

ISOLATION LEVEL

Sets the isolation level for the next transaction in the session.

READ COMMITTED

Allows a transaction to read rows written by other transactions only when they have been committed.

READ UNCOMMITTED

Allows a transaction to read rows that have been written, but not committed, by other transactions.

REPEATABLE READ

All sessions can see records that are committed before their first transactions were begun. Other open sessions can see or change only committed rows in the user’s current session. Consequently, later transactions can add records that might then be visible to the transactions of earlier sessions, but the other sessions must requery to see those records.

SERIALIZABLE

All sessions can see records that are ...