Transaction overview

TiDB supports complete distributed transactions, providing optimistic transactions and pessimistic transactions (introduced in TiDB 3.0). This article mainly introduces transaction statements, optimistic transactions and pessimistic transactions, transaction isolation levels, and application-side retry and error handling in optimistic transactions.

Common statements

This chapter introduces how to use transactions in TiDB. The following example demonstrates the process of a simple transaction:

Bob wants to transfer $20 to Alice. This transaction includes two operations:

• Bob’s account is reduced by $20.
• Alice’s account is increased by $20.

Transactions can ensure that both of the above operations are executed successfully or both fail.

Insert some sample data into the table using the users table in the bookshop database:

INSERT INTO users (id, nickname, balance)
  VALUES (2, 'Bob', 200);
INSERT INTO users (id, nickname, balance)
  VALUES (1, 'Alice', 100);

Run the following transactions and explain what each statement means:

BEGIN;
  UPDATE users SET balance = balance - 20 WHERE nickname = 'Bob';
  UPDATE users SET balance = balance + 20 WHERE nickname= 'Alice';
COMMIT;

After the above transaction is executed successfully, the table should look like this:

+----+--------------+---------+
| id | account_name | balance |
+----+--------------+---------+
|  1 | Alice        |  120.00 |
|  2 | Bob          |  180.00 |
+----+--------------+---------+

Start a transaction

To explicitly start a new transaction, you can use either BEGIN or START TRANSACTION.

BEGIN;

START TRANSACTION;

The default transaction mode of TiDB is pessimistic. You can also explicitly specify the optimistic transaction model:

BEGIN OPTIMISTIC;

Enable the pessimistic transaction mode:

BEGIN PESSIMISTIC;

If the current session is in the middle of a transaction when the above statement is executed, TiDB commits the current transaction first, and then starts a new transaction.

Commit a transaction

You can use the COMMIT statement to commit all modifications made by TiDB in the current transaction.

COMMIT;

Before enabling optimistic transactions, make sure that your application can properly handle errors that may be returned by a COMMIT statement. If you are not sure how your application will handle it, it is recommended to use the pessimistic transaction mode instead.

Roll back a transaction

You can use the ROLLBACK statement to roll back modifications of the current transaction.

ROLLBACK;

In the previous transfer example, if you roll back the entire transaction, Alice’s and Bob’s balances will remain unchanged, and all modifications of the current transaction are canceled.

TRUNCATE TABLE `users`;
INSERT INTO `users` (`id`, `nickname`, `balance`) VALUES (1, 'Alice', 100), (2, 'Bob', 200);
SELECT * FROM `users`;
+----+--------------+---------+
| id | nickname     | balance |
+----+--------------+---------+
|  1 | Alice        |  100.00 |
|  2 | Bob          |  200.00 |
+----+--------------+---------+
BEGIN;
  UPDATE `users` SET `balance` = `balance` - 20 WHERE `nickname`='Bob';
  UPDATE `users` SET `balance` = `balance` + 20 WHERE `nickname`='Alice';
ROLLBACK;
SELECT * FROM `users`;
+----+--------------+---------+
| id | nickname     | balance |
+----+--------------+---------+
|  1 | Alice        |  100.00 |
|  2 | Bob          |  200.00 |
+----+--------------+---------+

The transaction is also automatically rolled back if the client connection is stopped or closed.

Transaction isolation levels

The transaction isolation levels are the basis of database transaction processing. The “I” (Isolation) in ACID refers to the isolation of the transactions.

The SQL-92 standard defines four isolation levels:

• read uncommitted (READ UNCOMMITTED)
• read committed (READ COMMITTED)
• repeatable read (REPEATABLE READ)
• serializable (SERIALIZABLE).

See the table below for details:

TiDB supports the following isolation levels: READ COMMITTED and REPEATABLE READ:

mysql> SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED;
ERROR 8048 (HY000): The isolation level 'READ-UNCOMMITTED' is not supported. Set tidb_skip_isolation_level_check=1 to skip this error
mysql> SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ COMMITTED;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL REPEATABLE READ;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE;
ERROR 8048 (HY000): The isolation level 'SERIALIZABLE' is not supported. Set tidb_skip_isolation_level_check=1 to skip this error

TiDB implements Snapshot Isolation (SI) level consistency, also known as “repeatable read” for consistency with MySQL. This isolation level is different from ANSI Repeatable Read Isolation Level and MySQL Repeatable Read Isolation Level. For more details, see TiDB Transaction Isolation Levels.