Conditional commit inside functions

Hello!

I want to translate the following Oracle PL/SQL script into plpgsql.
Especially I'm having problems with the transaction thing. i tried START
TRANSACTION and COMMIT without success.

Any ideas?

Thanx.

Ciao,
Gerhard

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE insert_1Mio
IS
   maxcommit NUMBER;
BEGIN
   maxcommit := 10000;

   FOR i IN 1..1000000 LOOP
     INSERT INTO employee (id, department, firstname, lastname) VALUES (i, i, 'John' || to_char(i), 'Smith' ||
to_char(i));
     IF MOD(i, maxcommit) = 0 THEN
       COMMIT;
     END IF;
   END LOOP;

   COMMIT;
END;



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