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Oracle - Pragma Autonomous - Transaction in A Trigger - Stack Overflow

The document discusses the use of autonomous transactions within database triggers. A user has a trigger on a table that deletes related data from another table under certain conditions. The trigger uses an autonomous transaction with a commit. Another user responds that using an autonomous transaction in this way is likely an error, as it allows changes to commit even if the triggering transaction rolls back, violating atomicity. Instead of using an autonomous transaction, the trigger should simply perform the delete within the triggering transaction. The original user confirms they have removed the autonomous transaction from the trigger.

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309 views

Oracle - Pragma Autonomous - Transaction in A Trigger - Stack Overflow

The document discusses the use of autonomous transactions within database triggers. A user has a trigger on a table that deletes related data from another table under certain conditions. The trigger uses an autonomous transaction with a commit. Another user responds that using an autonomous transaction in this way is likely an error, as it allows changes to commit even if the triggering transaction rolls back, violating atomicity. Instead of using an autonomous transaction, the trigger should simply perform the delete within the triggering transaction. The original user confirms they have removed the autonomous transaction from the trigger.

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bskrbvkr
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© © All Rights Reserved
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8/17/2014 oracle - pragma autonomous_transaction in a trigger - Stack Overflow

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23774882/pragma-autonomous-transaction-in-a-trigger 1/2
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Justin Cave
115k 9 107 158
Jaanna
293 1 5 16
I have written a trigger on one table which deletes data from other table upon a condition. The trigger
has pragma autonomous_transaction, and trigger works as intended. However, I do wonder if there can
be any problems in future, say if data is inserted by multiple users/sources at the same time etc...Any
suggestions?
Source table t1:
--------------------------------------------
| user_id | auth_name1 | auth_name2 | data |
--------------------------------------------
| 1 | Name1 | Name2 | d1 |
| 2 | Name3 | Name4 | d2 |
| 3 | Name5 | Name1 | d3 |
--------------------------------------------
Target table t2:
------------------------------------------------
| record_id | identifier | status | data1 |
------------------------------------------------
| 100 | Broken | 11 | Name1 |
| 101 | Reminder | 99 | Name1 |
| 102 | Broken | 99 | Name2 |
| 103 | Broken | 11 | Name4 |
------------------------------------------------
Trigger code:
create or replace trigger "ca"."t$t1"
after update of auth_name1, auth_name2 on ca.t1
for each row
declare
pragma autonomous_transaction;
begin
if :new.auth_name1 is not null and :new.auth_name2 is not null then
delete from ca.t2 ml
where ml.identifier = 'Broken'
and data1 = regexp_substr(:new.auth_name1, '\S+$')||' '||regexp_substr(:new.auth_name1, '^\S+')
and status = 11;
commit;
end if;
end t$t1;
oracle plsql triggers oracle11g plsqldeveloper
edited May 21 at 6:00 asked May 21 at 5:43
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8/17/2014 oracle - pragma autonomous_transaction in a trigger - Stack Overflow
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/23774882/pragma-autonomous-transaction-in-a-trigger 2/2
1 Answer
Justin Cave
115k 9 107 158
Using an autonomous transaction for anything other than logging that you want to be preserved when
the parent transaction rolls back is almost certainly an error. This is not a good use of an autonomous
transaction.
What happens, for example, if I update a row in t1 but my transaction rolls back. The t2 changes
have already been made and committed so they don't roll back. That generally means that the t2 data
is now incorrect. The whole point of transactions is to ensure that a set of changes is atomic and is either
completely successful or completely reverted. Allowing code to be partially successful is almost never a
good idea.
I'm hard-pressed to see what using an autonomous transaction buys you here. You'll often see people
incorrectly using autonomous transactions to incorrectly work around mutating trigger errors. But the
code you posted wouldn't generate a mutating trigger error unless there was a row-level trigger on t2
that was also trying to update t1 or some similar mechanism that was introducing a mutating table. If
that's the case, though, using an autonomous transaction is generally even worse because the
autonomous transaction then cannot see the changes being made in the parent transaction which almost
certainly causes the code to behave differently than you would desire.
answered May 21 at 5:50
Thanks for the explanation. I removed pragma autonomous_transaction; as well as commit; statements
Jaanna May 21 at 6:08
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged oracle plsql
triggers oracle11g plsqldeveloper or ask your own question.
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