FORALLs and COMMITs

Received this note today from Debbie B:

I attended your Turbo Charge PL/SQL seminar today. I still have a question about where to put COMMIT. I’m using 10g. See (pseudo) code below.

Say I have 50,000 records and the LIMIT is 100. If an exception is thrown:

• Do I need a COMMIT in the WHEN clauses so successful DML gets committed, then loop processing will continue?
• I was thinking each DML needed it’s own BEGIN EXCEPTION END block so I would know if the error happened due to the insert or the update and could log the appropriate error. Is this wrong?

  OPEN v_cursor;

  LOOP

    FETCH v_cursor BULK COLLECT INTO data_array LIMIT i_limit;

    EXIT WHEN data_array.COUNT = 0;

    BEGIN

      FORALL i IN 1.. data_array.COUNT SAVE EXCEPTIONS

        INSERT INTO some_table VALUES data_array (i);

        COMMIT;

    EXCEPTION

        WHEN dml_errors THEN

             log_error;

             COMMIT;

             /* Don't RAISE, so execution will continue */

        WHEN OTHERS

             log_error;

             COMMIT;

             /* Don't RAISE, so execution will continue */

    END;

    BEGIN

      FORALL i IN 1.. data_array.COUNT SAVE EXCEPTIONS

        UPDATE some_table SET…

        COMMIT;

    EXCEPTION

        WHEN dml_errors THEN

             log_error;

             COMMIT;

             /* Don't RAISE, so execution will continue */

        WHEN OTHERS

             log_error;

             COMMIT;

             /* Don't RAISE, so execution will continue */

    END

  END LOOP;

  COMMIT;

  CLOSE v_cursor;

So many commits, so little time. 

Before addressing the specifics of this code, let's consider a more general question:

When and where should I put commits in my code?

Answer: How the heck should I know? Or, perhaps a little more politely: What is your transaction?

When you commit, you are really saying: I have finished making all changes needed for this transaction. Now it's time to save them, all together, all at once.

When we write back-end code that acts as an API to front end (user-driven) code, we usually don't have any commits. That's because we leave it up to the user to decide when they are done and ready to save their changes.

When we write code implementing backend processes not controlled by the user, then we do usually need to explicitly commit (and rollback). But again the primary question is very application-specific: what constitutes a transaction? 

Of course, the real world is messy - even when we clean it up, shear off rough edges, and make that real world fit into our cyber world.

For example, sometimes we have to do "incremental commits" - save changes to N rows at a time, to avoid rollback segment errors.

That may be the reason that Debbie has put COMMIT statements after each FORALL and after each logging of an error. 

But do you need a COMMIT in that exception section to ensure that successfully executed statements are not rolled back? NO! The failure of a SQL statement in your block will not force the rollback of previously completed statements.

As for putting each FORALL inside its own block, sure, that makes a lot of sense - if you want to make sure that both FORALLs always execute for each iteration of the loop. I would, however, put each inside its own nested subprogram (see my rewritten version of your code below).

I probably would not, however, use the same exceptional handling strategy for ORA-24381 (which your code implies was associated with the dml_errors exception) and for WHEN OTHERS. If something else went wrong in FORALL execution that was not caught by SAVE EXCEPTIONS, you should consider it "catastrophic" and stop the processing.

And, by the way, so far as I can tell, that final COMMIT before the CLOSE statement? Totally unnecessary - if you keep all those other COMMITs. You've already covered every path out of the loop!

OK, here's my offering of an alternative implementation. It's still kinda pseudo-codish because I lack the full details of your requirements, but:

• Just one COMMIT at the end
• Nested subprograms for each FORALL
• No handling of unanticipated errors.

IS

   failure_in_forall   EXCEPTION;

   PRAGMA EXCEPTION_INIT (failure_in_forall, -24381);

   PROCEDURE bulk_inserts (data_array_in your_type)

   IS

   BEGIN

      FORALL i IN 1 .. data_array_in.COUNT SAVE EXCEPTIONS

         INSERT INTO some_table

              VALUES data_array_in (i);

   EXCEPTION

      WHEN failure_in_forall

      THEN

         log_error;

   END;

   PROCEDURE bulk_updates (data_array_in your_type)

   IS

   BEGIN

      FORALL i IN 1 .. data_array.COUNT SAVE EXCEPTIONS

         UPDATE some_table

            SET x = data_array (i);

   EXCEPTION

      WHEN failure_in_forall

      THEN

         log_error;

   END;

BEGIN

   OPEN v_cursor;

   LOOP

      FETCH v_cursor BULK COLLECT INTO data_array LIMIT i_limit;

      EXIT WHEN data_array.COUNT = 0;

      bulk_inserts (data_array);

      bulk_updates (data_array);

   END LOOP;

   CLOSE v_cursor;

   COMMIT;

END;