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The ROLLBACK statement aborts the current transaction and all of its nested transactions, discarding all transactional updates made by statements included in the transaction. There are two ways to use ROLLBACK:
  • The ROLLBACK statement rolls back the entire transaction
  • The ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT statement rolls back and restarts the nested transaction started at the corresponding SAVEPOINT statement

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Required privileges

No privileges are required to rollback a transaction. However, privileges are required for each statement within a transaction.

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Syntax

ROLLBACK [TRANSACTION]

ROLLBACK [TRANSACTION] TO SAVEPOINT savepoint_name

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Parameters

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TO SAVEPOINT cockroach_restart
clause
If using advanced client-side transaction retries, retry the transaction. You should execute this statement when a transaction returns a 40001 / retry transaction error.
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TO SAVEPOINT name
clause
If using nested transactions, roll back and restart the nested transaction started at the corresponding SAVEPOINT statement.

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Examples

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Rollback a transaction

Typically, an application conditionally executes rollbacks, but we can see their behavior by using ROLLBACK instead of COMMIT directly: 
SELECT * FROM accounts;

   name   | balance 
----------+---------
 Marciela |    1000 

BEGIN;

UPDATE accounts SET balance = 2500 WHERE name = 'Marciela';

ROLLBACK;

SELECT * FROM accounts;

   name   | balance 
----------+---------
 Marciela |    1000

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Rollback a nested transaction

The ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT statement rolls back and restarts the nested transaction started at the corresponding SAVEPOINT statement. For example, the transaction below will insert the values (1,1) and (3,3) into the table, but not (2,2): 
BEGIN;
INSERT INTO kv VALUES (1,1);
SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
INSERT INTO kv VALUES (2,2);
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT my_savepoint;
INSERT INTO kv VALUES (3,3);
COMMIT;

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Retry a transaction

When using advanced client-side transaction retries, use ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT to handle a transaction that needs to be retried (identified via the 40001 error code or restart transaction string in the error message), and then re-execute the statements you want the transaction to contain. 
ROLLBACK TO SAVEPOINT cockroach_restart;

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See also

  • SAVEPOINT
  • BEGIN
  • COMMIT
  • RELEASE SAVEPOINT
  • SHOW SAVEPOINT STATUS
  • Transactions

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