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Views, triggers, transactions

In this part of the SQLite tutorial, we will mention views, triggers and transactions.

Views

A view is a specific look on data in from one or more tables. It can arrange data in some specific order,

higlight or hide some data. A view consists of a stored query accessible as a virtual table composed of

the result set of a query. Unlike ordinary tables a view does not form part of the physical schema. It is a

dynamic, virtual table computed or collated from data in the database.

In the next example, we create a simple view.

sqlite> SELECT * FROM Cars;

Id Name Cost

---------- ---------- ----------

1 Audi 52642

2 Mercedes 57127

3 Skoda 9000

4 Volvo 29000

5 Bentley 350000
 6 Citroen 21000

7 Hummer 41400

8 Volkswagen 21600

This is our data, upon which we create the view.

sqlite> CREATE VIEW CheapCars AS SELECT Name FROM Cars WHERE Cost < 30000;

sqlite> SELECT * FROM CheapCars;

Name

----------

Skoda

Volvo

Citroen

Volkswagen

The CREATE VIEW statement is used to create a view.

sqlite> .tables

Books CheapCars Friends Names Reservations

Cars Customers Log Orders Testing

 sqlite> DROP VIEW CheapCars;

sqlite> .tables

Books Customers Log Orders Testing

Cars Friends Names Reservations

Technically a view is a virtual table. So we can list all views with a .tables command. To remove a

view, we use the DROP VIEW SQL statement.

Triggers

Triggers are database operations that are automatically performed when a specified database event

occurs.

In the following example, we will use the Friends table and create a new Log table.

CREATE TABLE Log(Id integer PRIMARY KEY, OldName text, NewName text, Date text);

We will create 2 new tables for the next example with triggers.

CREATE TRIGGER mytrigger UPDATE OF Name ON Friends

BEGIN

INSERT INTO Log(OldName, NewName, Date) VALUES(old.Name, new.Name,

datetime('now'));

END;

We create a trigger called mytrigger with the CREATE TRIGGER statement. This trigger will launch a

INSERT statement whenever we update the name column of the Friends table. The INSERT statement

will insert the old name, the new name and the time stamp into the Log table.
 sqlite> SELECT * FROM Friends;

Id Name Sex

---------- ---------- ----------

1 Jane F

2 Thomas M

3 Franklin M

4 Elisabeth F

5 Mary F

6 Lucy F

7 Jack M

This is our data.

Next, we are going to update one row of the Friends table.

sqlite> UPDATE Friends SET Name='Frank' WHERE Id=3;

We update the third row of the table. The trigger is launched.

sqlite> SELECT * FROM Log;

Id OldName NewName Date

 ---------- ---------- ---------- -------------------

1 Franklin Frank 2009-11-14 16:36:28

We check the Log table. This log confirms the update operation we performed.

Transactions

A transaction is an atomic unit of database operations against the data in one or more databases. The

effects of all the SQL statements in a transaction can be either all committed to the database or all

rolled back.

In SQLite, any command other than the SELECT will start an implicit transaction. Manual transactions

are started with the BEGIN TRANSACTION statement and finished with the COMMIT OR ROLLBACK

statements.

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

CREATE TABLE Test(Id integer NOT NULL);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(1);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(2);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(3);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(NULL);

COMMIT;

Here we have a sample transaction. A transaction begins with BEGIN TRANSACTION and ends with

COMMIT.

We have a NOT NULL constraint set on the Id column. Thus, the fourth insert will not succeed. SQLite
does transactions specifically. For some errors, it reverts all changes. For others, it reverts only the last

statement and leaves other changes intact. In our case, the table is created and the first three inserts

are written into the table. The fourth one is not.

Say, we already had an empty table named Test. Executing the above transaction would fail

completely. No changes would be written. If we changed the CREATE TABLE statement into CREATE

TABLE IF NOT EXISTS, the first three statements would execute.

BEGIN TRANSACTION;

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS Test(Id integer NOT NULL);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(1);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(2);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(3);

INSERT INTO Test VALUES(NULL);

ROLLBACK;

A transaction can end with a COMMIT or a ROLLBACK statement. The ROLLBACK reverts all changes.

In this part of the SQLite tutorial, we have worked with views, triggers and transactions in SQLite.