Change for multiple queries in a string

Started by Bruce Momjianabout 23 years ago1 messageshackersgeneral
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#1Bruce Momjian
bruce@momjian.us
hackersgeneral

To improve handling of autocommit off mode, I am proposing a change in
our next release. Right now, if you pass multiple queries in the same
string to the backend:

psql -c 'INSERT INTO test VALUES (1);INSERT INTO test VALUES (2);" template1

the query is considered to be a single transaction. (Of course, this
doesn't make a lot of sense, but historically, this is how PostgreSQL
has behaved.) This causes confusion with autocommit off (and probably
confuses users too):

psql -c 'SET autocommit TO off;SELECT 1;COMMIT" template1

Right now, this will generate an error because of the hack used to get
everything in a single transaction. In our next release, this will work
fine, and sending multiple queries in a single string will be treated as
though each command was issued singly. If you need the old behavior,
you need to use BEGIN/COMMIT around you query:

psql -c 'BEGIN; INSERT INTO test VALUES (1);INSERT INTO test VALUES (2);COMMIT;" template1

(Psql already automatically breaks up queries passed on stdin.)

Is this OK with everyone?

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