How To Start a New Transaction Explicitly? - MySQL FAQs - Transaction Management: Commit or Rollback

If you are confused on the implicit new transaction rules, you can always start a new transaction with the "START TRANSACTION" command to start a new transaction explicitly. "START TRANSACTION" command works in both "Autocommit On" and "Autocommit Off" modes.

The following tutorial exercise shows you how to start a transaction explicitly:

>\mysql\bin\mysql -u dev -piyf fyi

mysql> START TRANSACTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO fyi_links (url, id)
   VALUES ('fyicenter.com', 101);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.11 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO fyi_links (url, id)
   VALUES ('centerfyi.com', 110);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT * FROM fyi_links;
+-----+---------------+-------+--------+--------------------
| id  | url           | notes | counts | created           
+-----+---------------+-------+--------+--------------------
| 101 | fyicenter.com | NULL  |   NULL | 2006-07-01 20:27:49
| 110 | centerfyi.com | NULL  |   NULL | 2006-07-01 20:28:10
+-----+---------------+-------+--------+--------------------
2 rows in set (0.07 sec)

mysql> ROLLBACK;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.07 sec)