Learning is not a spectator sport

exitcommit … or your career down the drain

September 25, 2015

1 minute

I recently posted a little video on the ‘exitcommit’ option in SQL Plus, adding a theatrical drama to present a worst case scenario of potentially destroying a Production system. Take 3 mins to have a chuckle here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCgbxGayjXA

My predecessor Natalka Roshak ‏tweeted an interesting followup that I thought I would share, namely, if you’re a regular SQL Plus user, you should definitely take the time to check out the documentation on ‘exitcommit’ and its relationship to other related variables within SQL Plus.

Because you probably want to make sure you have got everything set just right !

3 responses to “exitcommit … or your career down the drain”

Noons

September 28, 2015 at 11:52 am

Why on earth was autocommit invented, to this day escapes me!
I’m quite sure it’s a flaw in my “bad dba” knowledge…
Not very keen on exitcommit either, I’ve seen it do bad things indeed.
Actually raised that concern first to DrDBA (Ken Jacobs) back in the second Australian Oracle User Conference I attended in Adelaide – somewhere in the early 90s.
He clicked into the danger but did nothing about it, obviously.
Apparently we were not big enough clients to deserve listening…

Reply
Rich Soule

March 11, 2020 at 1:45 am

I’d make the argument that commit on exit is the expected and normal behavior and you should be using PROMPT to know where you are working.

If you set up your environment to be different than the usual behavior, then when you go somewhere else, you are probably not going to get what you want…, Or if someone comes in and does something for you (contractor?) then their stuff will break.

Reply
1. Connor McDonald
  
  March 11, 2020 at 1:23 pm
  
  Valid points, but for me, I’d still rather than if the behaviour is unexpected, then I want that unexpected behaviour to be a rollback not a commit
  
  Reply