Re: [HACKERS] It sorta works, but I'm confused about locking

> Bruce Momjian <maillist(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
> > I recommend you check out what is currently done properly, and fix the
> > ones that are incorrect.
>
> Well, yes. The question was how to tell which is which :-)

I didn't say it was easy. :-)

>
> > I can imagine some cases where you would want to get a lock and keep it
> > until the end of the transaction, and other times when you would want to
> > release it before transaction end.
>
> I guess I'm not understanding something. How can it ever be correct
> practice to release a lock before transaction end? For example, if I
> write some changes in a table, and then release the lock, wouldn't that
> allow other backends to see the not-yet-committed changes? What if I
> then abort my transaction? Now the other backends have acted on
> information they should never have seen at all.
>
> Releasing a read lock strikes me as just as dangerous but for more
> subtle reasons --- once you have read a table, what you have read
> ought to look the same until the end of your transaction.
>
> Since there is an unset-write-lock function, I assume it must have
> valid uses, but I don't see what they are.

Suppose you want to update a table as part of internal query processing.
You lock it, update it, and unlock it. You just need the lock while
you are updating it.

>
> >> Is there a bug here, or is there some special definition of user access
> >> to a system table that means the select isn't acquiring a read lock?
> >> Selects and updates on ordinary user tables seem to interlock fine...
>
> > Select certainly should be locking. Something is wrong, but I am not
> > sure what. If you want me to check into it, let me know.
>
> Please. (Note that I saw this with my revised version of async.c;
> I believe you will see the same behavior with the currently-checked-in
> code, but do not have the time to rebuild that version to make sure.)

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