Retrieves a snapshot of the database at the moment the read-only transaction starts. Other users can update rows in the table you are using, but your transaction retrieves the rows as they existed at the time the transaction started. You cannot update, insert, or delete rows, or execute data definition statements in a read-only transaction with the exception of declaring a local temporary table or modifying data in a created or declared temporary table. Read-only transactions are implicitly isolation level serializable. Because a read-only transaction uses the snapshot (.snp) version of the database, any changes that other users make and commit during the transaction are invisible to you. Using a read-only transaction lets you read data without incurring the overhead of row locking. (You do incur overhead for keeping a snapshot of the tables you specify in the RESERVING clause, but this overhead is less than that of a comparable read/write transaction.) Because of the limited nature of read-only transactions, they are subject to several restrictions.