Multi-query is atomic?!

[vitaly-t]

Opening this issue, following this: multi-query is atomic?

This was originally posted against pg-promise, but quick tests revealed that's how node-postgres works, surprisingly. And I am totally caught up by this revelation myself. I was sure that when executing a multi-query string the operation wasn't atomic, but turns out that it is.

Steps to reproduce

Execute something like this with a single call to the query method:

INSERT INTO table VALUES(1, 2);INSERT INTO table VALUES(3, 4);bla-bla

Expected results

Two records are inserted, and then an error is thrown, about the invalid bla-bla query.

Actual results

The two inserted records are rolled back, following the last-query error, even though we do not use any transaction 😮

[charmander]

Yes, it’s in a transaction. That’s how the PostgreSQL protocol works. Compare libpq:

The command string can include multiple SQL commands (separated by semicolons). Multiple queries sent in a single PQexec call are processed in a single transaction, unless there are explicit BEGIN/COMMIT commands included in the query string to divide it into multiple transactions.

[vitaly-t]

Thank you for clarifying. This was somehow lost in translation, it seems. I had to update all the corresponding methods documentation, as per my answer on StackOverflow.