Different database systems use various locking modes, but they have two basic modes in common: shared and exclusive. Shared locks can be held on a single object by multiple users. If one user has a shared lock on a record, then a second user can also get a shared lock on that same record; however, the second user cannot get an exclusive lock on that record. Exclusive locks are exclusive to the user that obtains them. If one user has an exclusive lock on a record, then a second user cannot get either type of lock on the same record.
Performance and concurrency can also be affected by the locking level used in the database system. The locking level determines the size of an object that is locked in a database. For example, many database systems let you lock an entire table, as well as individual records. An intermediate level of locking, page-level locking, is also common. A page contains one or more records and is typically the amount of data read from the disk in a single disk access. The major disadvantage of page-level locking is that if one user locks a record, a second user may not be able to lock other records because they are stored on the same page as the locked record.
