Actually, calling $sth->finish becomes important only on the cached handles when not all of the data was fetched. Otherwise, next "execute" on that handle may result in error. Though it all depends on the actual driver. Many (or is it all now?) drivers automatically do "finish" for the handles that are "executed" again. So, if one works with such driver, then one does not need "finish" at all.

BTW, the above behavior of the drivers potentially masks errors of simultaneous use of the same handle :) YMMV.

As to "dangers" of using "finish", this might be exaggerated. After all, one should check for errors right after the call to "fetch", if this is not done, then clearing that error state later by "finish" does not play any role. Mostly, these "finish" calls are just useless. IMHO.

BTW. Doing "undef $sth" on statement with active transactions results in ROLLBACK, not COMMIT. At least this is what I was getting with SQLite :)