By default, each client that connects to the MySQL server begins with autocommit mode enabled, which automatically commits every SQL statement as you execute it. To use multiple-statement transactions, you can switch autocommit off with the SQL statement SET autocommit = 0 and end each transaction with either COMMIT and ROLLBACK. If you want to leave autocommit on, you can begin your transactions within START TRANSACTION and end them with COMMIT or ROLLBACK. Before MySQL 4.0.11, you have to use the keyword BEGIN instead of START TRANSACTION. The following example shows two transactions. The first is committed and the second is rolled back.

shell> mysql test

mysql> CREATE TABLE customer (a INT, b CHAR (20), INDEX (A))
    -> TYPE=InnoDB;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> BEGIN;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO customer VALUES (10, 'Heikki');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> COMMIT;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SET autocommit=0;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO customer VALUES (15, 'John');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> ROLLBACK;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM customer;
+------+--------+
| a    | b      |
+------+--------+
|   10 | Heikki |
+------+--------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql>

In APIs such as PHP, Perl DBI, JDBC, ODBC, or the standard C call interface of MySQL, you can send transaction control statements such as COMMIT to the MySQL server as strings just like any other SQL statements such as SELECT or INSERT. Some APIs also offer separate special transaction commit and rollback functions or methods.