In
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
and
data management
Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource.
Concept
The concept of data management arose in the 1980s as technology moved from sequential processing (first punched cards, then magnetic tape) to r ...
, a commit is the making of a set of tentative changes permanent, marking the end of a
transaction and providing ''Durability'' to
ACID transactions
In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...
. A ''commit'' is an act of committing. The record of commits is called the commit log.
Data management
A
COMMIT statement in
SQL ends a
transaction within a
relational database management system
A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...
(RDBMS) and makes all changes visible to other users. The general format is to issue a
BEGIN WORK (or
BEGIN TRANSACTION, depending on the database vendor) statement, one or more SQL statements, and then the
COMMIT statement. Alternatively, a
ROLLBACK
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, w ...
statement can be issued, which undoes all the work performed since
BEGIN WORK was issued. A
COMMIT statement will also release any existing
savepoint
A savepoint is a way of implementing subtransactions (also known as nested transactions) within a relational database management system by indicating a point within a transaction that can be " rolled back to" without affecting any work done in t ...
s that may be in use.
In terms of transactions, the opposite of commit is to discard the tentative changes of a transaction, a
rollback
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, w ...
.
See also
*
Commit (version control)
In version control systems, a commit is an operation which sends the latest changes of the source code to the repository, making these changes part of the head revision of the repository. Unlike commits in data management, commits in version co ...
*
Atomic commit
In the field of computer science, an atomic commit is an operation that applies a set of distinct changes as a single operation. If the changes are applied, then the atomic commit is said to have succeeded. If there is a failure before the atomic ...
*
Two-phase commit protocol
In transaction processing, databases, and computer networking, the two-phase commit protocol (2PC) is a type of atomic commitment protocol (ACP). It is a distributed algorithm that coordinates all the processes that participate in a distributed a ...
*
Three-phase commit protocol In computer networking and databases, the three-phase commit protocol (3PC) is a distributed algorithm which lets all nodes in a distributed system agree to commit a transaction. It is a more failure-resilient refinement of the two-phase commit p ...
Data management
SQL
Transaction processing
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