database transactions and prepared statements

[Ransy72560]

I apologize in advance if there is documentation on this - I can't find it. If it is available and someone has a link handy, I'd appreciate it.

I have some php code that was originally written to communicate with the database through the PEAR MDB2 module, and I'm porting it into a vBulletin product. I have run into a couple of questions/issues with the way vBulletin interacts with the db:

1) My code currently makes use of database transactions (I need to rollback if any part of the transaction fails). Does vBulletin provide support for this? If not, is there some recommended way I can hack it? For instance, manually initiate a transaction with $db->query("START TRANSACTION;"); ? I'm not sure I like that idea because it seems db-specific, but may be the only option I suppose.

2) My code also makes use of prepared statements because a single transaction has the potential to make a substantial number of inserts into the database. For performance reasons I would like to continue using them. Does vBulletin provide support for this functionality?

Thank you in advance!