A transaction needs to have a starting and ending point. The starting point can be implied, for example, by starting a host program, or it can be explicit with a START TRANSACTION or a BEGIN TRANSACTION. The ending point is explicit with either a COMMIT or ROLLBACK command.

SQL Server starts with BEGIN TRANSACTION.

     BEGIN TRANSACTION;
       INSERT INTO MANAGER_TBL
         ('STOR_NO', 'MGR_NO', 'MGR_NAME')
           SELECT STOR_ID, EMPL_ID, EMPL_NAME
             FROM EMPLOYEE_TBL
            WHERE TITLE = 'STORE MANAGER';
     COMMIT;

SQL:1999, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server switched to the new SQL standard START TRANSACTION:

     START TRANSACTION;
       INSERT INTO MANAGER_TBL
         ('STOR_NO', 'MGR_NO', 'MGR_NAME')
           SELECT STOR_ID, EMPL_ID, EMPL_NAME
             FROM EMPLOYEE_TBL
            WHERE TITLE = 'STORE MANAGER';
     COMMIT;

> Access transaction control starts with BeginTrans and ends with CommitTrans or RollbackTrans.

> DB2 and ORACLE always have an implied starting point, so they do not need an explicit starting statement.