Barry Lind wrote:
> I agree with Simon's comments.  And to them I would add:  I had assumed 
> that the requirements for 'nested transactions' was following some 
> standard definition or specification (i.e. the ANSI SQL spec).  But from 
> what I can tell, we are rolling our own definition here, not following a 
> specification or standard, and not following any of the other major 
> commercial databases lead.
> 
> I think venturing out on our own and inventing new symantics for 
> transactions and sql syntax to support them without giving this a lot of 
> thought is bound to lead to problems.
> 
> Perhaps I am completely wrong here and there is a clear standard or spec 
> that is being implemented, if so, please let me know what that is as it 
> would help me in better understanding this patch.
> 
> I have been reviewing what Oracle does in this area and it doesn't at 
> all resemble what this patch is exposing (especially as far as syntax 
> goes).  I plan to look at DB2 and MSSQL next.

I realized about three weeks ago that our syntax for nested transactions
doesn't follow anyone else's method.  I think I might be the person who
suggested the idea because it seemed more logical to me to allow
BEGIN;BEGIN;COMMIT;COMMIT rather than naming arbitrary locations as
savepoints and doing a rollback to that savepoint name.

And consider this case:

        BEGIN;
        ...
        SAVEPOINT x;
        SELECT func_call();
        SELECT func_call();
        COMMIT;

Now if func_call has a savepoint, it is really nested because it can't
know whether the savepoint X will be used to roll back, so its status is
dependent on the status of X.  Now, if we used savepoints in func_call,
what happens in the second function call when we define a savepoint with
the same name?  I assume we overwrite the original, but using nested
transaction syntax seems much clearer.  

Basically, we have to implement this in a nested way.  Once it is done,
we can add the window dressing to support the ANSI syntax.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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