Help accessing sql 2005

Hello 

I have just installed freetds and have gotten it to work (somewhat). 

to test I selected a record set from northwind on sql 2005 and it worked fine. 

Next I tried to select a record set from a different database and table, 

then I got a message about setting autocommit. 

so now I set autocommit like this 

	$dsn = array(
			'phptype' => "odbc",
			'hostspec' => "sqlserver-ontime",
			'username' => "user",
			'password' => "pw"
			);
	$db_attrs = array (
			'AutoCommit' => true
			);
	print(	$_POST['us_name'] . ' ' . $_POST['us_pw']);
	$db = DB::connect($dsn, $db_attrs);
	$db->setFetchMode(DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC);
	$sql = "SELECT userid,loginid,fullname,disable FROM timetrakusers where loginid = '" .$_POST['us_name']. "' and password = '" .$_POST['us_pw']. "';";
	$result = $db->query($sql);


But I get an error: 

An error occurred while trying to run your query. 
Error message: DB Error: unknown option AutoCommit 
Details: [DB Error: unknown error] 


First why does Northwind work without autocommit,
 is it because the "recovery method is simple" (no transaction log)? 

Second could someone point me to, or share an example of reading and writing to a mssql 2005? 

Thanks In advance 

Bill Kruchas