Using transactions

Depending on the application you use to connect to MySQL, you may have to execute a COMMIT statement to save the data. By default, the MySQL client is set to use autocommit, so you don't have to do this. If you want to have the option to undo the INSERT statement, then you need to use a transaction. This can be done either with a BEGIN statement or a START TRANSACTION statement. Once you have run one or more statements to modify the data, you need to use COMMIT or ROLLBACK.

The following code shows how to use a transaction:

BEGIN;  -- This indicates the begin of the transaction
INSERT INTO mytable VALUES (1, 'foo', 'bar', 'baz');
SELECT * FROM mytable;
COMMIT;  -- Use ROLLBACK instead of COMMIT if you don't want to save your work

Note

In the preceding statements, the two dashes followed by a space (-- ) indicates a comment in MySQL. These comments can also use C style comments; for example, ...