In relational databases, which we’re discussing here, every query that modifies data is wrapped in a transaction. If you weren’t aware of this, take a look at the following query:

Even though this example doesn’t explicitly use START TRANSACTION and COMMIT, the query is still placed within a transaction and is automatically committed.

This happens thanks to the “autocommit” option, which automatically wraps your query in a transaction and commits it.

Remember, when the “autocommit” option is enabled, you cannot use the ROLLBACK operation. Of course, if your query encounters an error, the database will automatically perform a rollback, so changes won’t be saved.

You don’t need to worry about manually starting and committing transactions because autocommit is enabled by default .

The autocommit setting works at the session level, meaning that enabling or disabling it won’t affect queries executed by another user.

You can enable autocommit with the following statement:

You can disable autocommit with this statement:

Starting a transaction will also disable autocommit, like this:

During development, we often use database clients. Here’s an example using the PHPStorm IDE. As shown in the screenshot below, there is a “TX: ...” selection option.

Auto - the autocommit mode described in this article.
Manual - equivalent to autocommit = 0, where we need to manually execute COMMIT or ROLLBACK to save or undo changes.

Even though autocommit is a basic concept, it's essential to understand how your database handles transactions by default. Knowing these fundamentals helps maintain data consistency and control, especially during error handling and development.