DBI driver and transactions

I'm getting very odd behaviour and am getting quite frustrated at fighting this
thing. So just so I know for the future does anyone know if there are problems
with using transactions when using cached dbi handles?

I was using my own caching of the handle(s) but I didn't have time to work out
who, what, why and where someone was disconnecting it so switched to the DBI
caching connect. Note, this is NOT persistent/pooled connections.

However, either there is something wrong (and it's been fixed since I loaded
the software) or I completely fail to grasp the concept of transactions as
understood by DBI.

With AutoCommit => 0 I see a BEGIN logged right before the
first query I send...

Oh I give up. Trying to clarify what happens when I'm now seeing rollbacks
issued in AutoCommit => mode where I'm not doing any and it's certainly not me
since I've got a trap on my interface layer to DBI for that and it's not been
tripped at all.

So,

a) anyone know of any problems,

b) can I assume it is me and not just give up on this DBI stuff in the future (
I haven't got the time to rewrite my application now; not that I can't see it
being a particularly onerous task for what I use from DBI )

c) can I just issue BEGIN, COMMIT, ROLLBACK when I want to via normal
$dbh->do(...) without causing myself even more problems?

and
d) I've said it before but what's the point of DBI if it's not to make life
easier?

This on a linux debian potato with:

Pg 7.2.3
Perl 5.8.0
DBI 1.30
DBD::Pg 1.13

--
Nigel J. Andrews