How to test MySQL transactions?

I have a question about testing the queries in a transaction. I've been using MySQL transactions for quite some time now, and everytime I do this, I use something like:

$doCommit = true;
$error = "";
mysql_query("BEGIN");

/* repeat this part with the different queries in the transaction
   this often involves updating of and inserting in multiple tables */
$query = "SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, etc";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if(!$result){
    $error .= mysql_error() . " in " . $query . "<BR>";
    $doCommit = false;
}
/* end of repeating part */

if($doCommit){
    mysql_query("COMMIT");
} else {
    echo $error;
    mysql_query("ROLLBACK");
}

Now, it often happens that I want to test my transaction, so I change mysql_query("COMMIT"); to mysql_query("ROLLBACK");, but I can imagine this is not a very good way to test this kind of stuff. It's usually not really feasable to copy every table to a temp_table and update and insert into those tables and delete them afterwards (for instance because tables maybe very large). Of course, when the code goes into production relevant error-handling (instead of just printing the error) is put into place.

What's the best way to do stuff like this?