What causes "No transaction in progress" in prestodb/presto?

Start a transaction first: START TRANSACTION; ... ; COMMIT

prestodb/presto · error · PrestoException

NOT_IN_TRANSACTION

NOT_IN_TRANSACTION

Error message

No transaction in progress

What it means

COMMIT was executed but the session has no open transaction. CommitTask.execute checks session.getTransactionId().isPresent() and throws NOT_IN_TRANSACTION if absent, because there is no transaction to commit.

Source

Thrown at presto-main-base/src/main/java/com/facebook/presto/execution/CommitTask.java:44

import java.util.List;

import static com.facebook.presto.spi.StandardErrorCode.NOT_IN_TRANSACTION;

public class CommitTask
        implements SessionTransactionControlTask<Commit>
{
    @Override
    public String getName()
    {
        return "COMMIT";
    }

    @Override
    public ListenableFuture<?> execute(Commit statement, TransactionManager transactionManager, Metadata metadata, AccessControl accessControl, QueryStateMachine stateMachine, List<Expression> parameters, String query)
    {
        Session session = stateMachine.getSession();
        if (!session.getTransactionId().isPresent()) {
            throw new PrestoException(NOT_IN_TRANSACTION, "No transaction in progress");
        }
        TransactionId transactionId = session.getTransactionId().get();

        stateMachine.clearTransactionId();
        return transactionManager.asyncCommit(transactionId);
    }
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 55bb57d202)

Solutions

Start a transaction first: START TRANSACTION; ... ; COMMIT
Remove the stray COMMIT if autocommit is desired — each statement commits on its own
Check driver/session autocommit settings so COMMIT is only sent when a transaction was explicitly started
Guard application logic with a transaction-active flag before sending COMMIT

Example fix

// before
Connection c = driver.connect(...); // autocommit on
stmt.execute("COMMIT");
// after
stmt.execute("START TRANSACTION");
stmt.execute("INSERT ...");
stmt.execute("COMMIT");

Defensive patterns

Strategy: try-catch

Validate before calling

// track transaction state client-side
if (!sessionState.isInTransaction()) {
    throw new IllegalStateException("COMMIT skipped: no transaction in progress");
}

Try / catch

try {
    stmt.execute("COMMIT");
} catch (PrestoSQLException e) {
    if ("NOT_IN_TRANSACTION".equals(e.getErrorCodeName())) {
        // no-op or log: transaction already closed
    } else throw e;
}

Prevention

Always pair START TRANSACTION / COMMIT in the same session and code path
Avoid mixing autocommit and manual transaction control
Track transaction state in your connection wrapper before issuing COMMIT
Handle reconnects by re-checking transaction state rather than blindly resending COMMIT

When it happens

Trigger: Running COMMIT without a preceding START TRANSACTION in the same session; running COMMIT after an implicit auto-commit of the previous statement; issuing COMMIT twice (the first COMMIT clears the session transaction id via stateMachine.clearTransactionId()); session transaction id was cleared by a prior commit or rollback.

Common situations: Client drivers with autocommit enabled issuing manual COMMIT; scripts that unconditionally COMMIT; retry logic resending COMMIT after a connection drop mid-transaction; mixing session-scoped transaction state across pooled connections.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of prestodb/presto@55bb57d202 (2026-09-04). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4efc56365b8a1347. Report an issue: GitHub.