What will happen to the current MySQL transaction if a START TRANSACTION command is executed in the middle of that current transaction?

The current transaction will be committed and ended if START TRANSACTION is executed in the middle of a current transaction. All the database changes made in the current transaction will be made permanent. This is called an implicit commit by a START TRANSACTION command.

Example

Suppose we have the following values in table ‘marks’

mysql> select * from marks;
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
| Id   | Name    | Subject   | Marks |
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
| 1    | Aarav   | Maths     | 50    |
| 1    | Harshit | Maths     | 55    |
| 3    | Gaurav  | Comp      | 69    |
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> START TRANSACTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO Marks Values(4, 'Rahul','History',40);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> INSERT INTO Marks Values(5, 'Yashraj','English',48);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> START TRANSACTION;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

In this example, we can observe that when the START TRANSACTION statement is executed in the middle of the current transaction then it will implicitly end the current transaction and changes will be committed.

mysql> select * from marks;
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
| Id   | Name    | Subject   | Marks |
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
| 1    | Aarav   | Maths     | 50    |
| 1    | Harshit | Maths     | 55    |
| 3    | Gaurav  | Comp      | 69    |
| 4    | Rahul   | History   | 40    |
| 5    | Yashraj | English   | 48    |
+------+---------+-----------+-------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)