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;

--
http://www.wiesinger.com/