Issuing COMMIT WORK in a Database That Is Not ANSI Compliant

In a database that is not ANSI compliant, but that supports transaction logging, if you initiate a transaction with a BEGIN WORK statement, you must issue a COMMIT WORK statement at the end of the transaction. If you fail to issue a COMMIT WORK statement in this case, the database server rolls back any modifications that the transaction made to the database.

If you do not issue a BEGIN WORK statement, however, each statement executes within its own transaction. These single-statement transactions do not require either a BEGIN WORK statement or a COMMIT WORK statement.