Re: Error on failed COMMIT

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020 at 2:08 PM Dave Cramer <davecramer(at)postgres(dot)rocks> wrote:
> Well now you are asking the driver to re-interpret the results in a different way than the server which is not what we tend to do.
>
> The server throws an error we throw an error. We really aren't in the business of re-interpreting the servers responses.

I don't really see a reason why the driver has to throw an exception
if and only if there is an ERROR on the PostgreSQL side. But even if
you want to make that rule for some reason, it doesn't preclude
correct behavior here. All you really need is to have con.commit()
return some indication of what the command tag was, just as, say, psql
would do. If the server provides you with status information and you
throw it out instead of passing it along to the application, that's
not ideal.

Another thing that kinda puzzles me about this situation is that, as
far as I know, the only time COMMIT returns ROLLBACK is if the
transaction has already previously reported an ERROR. But if an ERROR
gets turned into an exception, then, in the code snippet previously
provided, we'd never reach con.commit() in the first place.

I'm not trying to deny that you might find some other server behavior
more convenient. You might. And, to Vik's original point, it might be
more compliant with the spec, too. But since changing that would have
a pretty big blast radius at this stage, I think it's worth trying to
make things work as well as they can with the server behavior that we
already have. And I don't really see anything preventing the driver
from doing that technically. I don't understand the idea that the
driver is somehow not allowed to notice the command tag.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company