In the context of computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 and data management

Data management

Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource.- Overview :The official definition provided by DAMA International, the professional organization for those in the data management profession, is: "Data Resource Management is the development and execution...

, commit refers to the idea of making a set of tentative changes permanent. A popular usage is at the end of a transaction

Database transaction

A transaction comprises a unit of work performed within a database management system against a database, and treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions...

. A commit is an act of committing.

Data management

A COMMIT statement in SQL

SQL

SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....

 ends a transaction

Database transaction

A transaction comprises a unit of work performed within a database management system against a database, and treated in a coherent and reliable way independent of other transactions...

 within a relational database management system

Relational database management system

A relational database management system is a database management system that is based on the relational model as introduced by E. F. Codd. Most popular databases currently in use are based on the relational database model....

 (RDBMS) and makes all changes visible to other users. The general format is to issue a BEGIN WORK statement, one or more SQL statements, and then the COMMIT statement. Alternatively, a ROLLBACK

Rollback (data management)

In database technologies, a rollback is an operation which returns the database to some previous state. Rollbacks are important for database integrity, because they mean that the database can be restored to a clean copy even after erroneous operations are performed...

statement can be issued, which undoes all the work performed since BEGIN WORK was issued. A COMMIT statement will also release any existing savepoint

Savepoint

A savepoint is a way of implementing subtransactions within a relational database management system by indicating a point within a transaction that can be "rolled back to" without affecting any work done in the transaction before the savepoint was created. Multiple savepoints can exist within a...

s that may be in use.

In terms of transactions, the opposite of commit is to discard the tentative changes of a transaction, a rollback

Rollback (data management)

In database technologies, a rollback is an operation which returns the database to some previous state. Rollbacks are important for database integrity, because they mean that the database can be restored to a clean copy even after erroneous operations are performed...

.

Revision control

Commits are also done for revision control

Revision control

Revision control, also known as version control and source control , is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may change the same files...

 systems for source code

Source code

In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...

 such as Subversion or Concurrent Versions System

Concurrent Versions System

The Concurrent Versions System , also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, is a client-server free software revision control system in the field of software development. Version control system software keeps track of all work and all changes in a set of files, and allows several developers ...

. A commit in the context of these version control systems refers to submitting the latest changes of the source code to the repository, and making these changes part of the head revision of the repository. Thus, when other users do an UPDATE or a checkout from the repository, they will receive the latest committed version, unless they specify they wish to retrieve a previous version of the source code in the repository. Version control systems also have similar functionality to SQL databases in that they allow rolling back to previous versions easily. In this context, a commit with version control systems is not as dangerous as it allows easy rollback, even after the commit has been done.