FAQ - Dolt

Why is it called Dolt? Are you calling me dumb?
It's named dolt to pay homage to how Linus Torvalds named git:
Torvalds sarcastically quipped about the name git (which means "unpleasant person" in British English slang): "I'm an egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', now 'git'."
We wanted a word meaning "idiot", starting with D for Data, short enough to type on the command line, and not taken in the standard command line lexicon. So, dolt.
The MySQL shell gives me an error: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/tmp/mysql.sock'
The MySQL shell will try to connect through a socket file on many OSes. To force it to use TCP instead, give it the loopback address like this:
% mysql --host 127.0.0.1 ...
What does @@autocommit do?
This is a SQL variable that you can turn on for your SQL session like so:
SET @@autocommit = 1
It's on by default in the MySQL shell, as well as in most clients. But some clients (notably the Python MySQL connector) turn it off by default.
You must commit your changes for them to persist after your session ends, either by setting @@autocommit to on, or by issuing COMMIT statements manually.
What's the difference between COMMIT and DOLT_COMMIT()?
COMMIT is a standard SQL statement that commits a transaction. In dolt, it just flushes any pending changes in the current SQL session to disk, updating the working set. HEAD stays the same, but your working set changes. This means your edits will persist after this session ends.
DOLT_COMMIT() commits the current SQL transaction, then creates a new dolt commit on the current branch. It's the same as if you run dolt commit from the command line.
I want each of my connected SQL users to get their own branch to make changes on, then merge them back into main when they're done making edits. How do I do that?
We are glad you asked! This is a common use case, and giving each user their own branch is something we've spent a lot of time getting right. For more details on how to use this pattern effectively, see using branches.
Does Dolt support transactions?
Yes, it should exactly work the same as MySQL, but with fewer locks for competing writes.
It's also possible for different sessions to connect to different branches on the same server. See using branches for details.
What SQL features / syntax are supported?
Most of them! Check out the docs for the full list of supported features.
You can check out what we're working on next on our roadmap. Paying customers get their feature requests bumped to the front of the line.
Does Dolt support my favorite SQL workbench / tool?
Probably! Have you tried it? If you try it and it doesn't work, let us know with an issue or in our Discord and we'll see what we can do. A lot of times we can fix small compatibility issues really quick, like the same week. And even if we can't, we want to know about it! Our goal is to be a 100% drop-in replacement for MySQL.