Batch update in Postgresql JDBC driver rolls back in autocommit

Question

I am doing batch inserts using postgres 9.3-1100-jdbc41 JDBC4 driver.

According to the JDBC specification, its up to the application to disable autocommit and to commit or rollback the transaction.

In my case, I am not using any transaction(ie, auto commit is true) but still the inserts are rolled back if one of the insert in the batch fails.

According to JDBC specification "If one of the commands in a batch update fails to execute properly, this method throws a BatchUpdateException, and a JDBC driver may or may not continue to process the remaining commands in the batch.". Here it does not says that previously executed commands will be rolled back.

Is my understanding wrong? If not why driver is behaving in this way and if yes what is the right behavior according to specification.

Answer 1

As far as I can tell the spec essentially leaves this up to the driver; it doesn't specify whether or not already-processed work is committed if the batch fails.

PgJDBC executes the batch in a transaction, so if any part of the batch fails then it will all be aborted.

If you feel this behaviour to be incorrect, the first thing you need to do is write a test case demonstrating that other drivers consistently behave a different way to PgJDBC and submit it to the PgJDBC issue tracker . We do not have time to research behaviour of other drivers, so you need to write the test case and run it some other popular databases (MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, etc) or arrange to have it run by others. If you show that PgJDBC's behaviour differs from how other drivers handle batches then it'll be worth thinking about adding an option to change the behaviour (and working on making it the default eventually).