Question

Hopefully some smarter DBAs than I can help me find a good solution for what I need to do.

For the sake of discussion, lets assume I have a table called ‘work’ with some number of columns, one of which is a column that represents ownership of that row of work from a given client. The scenario is that I’ll have 2 clients connected and polling a table for work to be done, when a row (or some number of rows) shows up, the first client that selects the rows will also update them to imply ownership, that update will remove those rows from being returned to any other client’s selects. My question is, in this scenario, what sort of locking can I use to prevent 2 clients from hitting the table at the same time and both of them being returned the same rows via the select?

Answer 1

The UPDATE statement with RETURNING clause is the way to do this.

UPDATE table
SET ownership = owner
RETURNING ( column list );

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