Question

I can see how to turn off row level and page level locking in SQL Server, but I cannot find a way to force SQL Server to use row level locking. Is there a way to force SQL Server to use row level locking and NOT use page level locking?

Answer 1

You can use the ROWLOCK hint, but AFAIK SQL may decide to escalate it if it runs low on resources

From the doco:

ROWLOCK Specifies that row locks are
taken when page or table locks are
ordinarily taken. When specified in
transactions operating at the SNAPSHOT
isolation level, row locks are not
taken unless ROWLOCK is combined with
other table hints that require locks,
such as UPDLOCK and HOLDLOCK.

and

Lock hints ROWLOCK, UPDLOCK, AND XLOCK
that acquire row-level locks may place
locks on index keys rather than the
actual data rows. For example, if a
table has a nonclustered index, and a
SELECT statement using a lock hint is
handled by a covering index, a lock is
acquired on the index key in the
covering index rather than on the data
row in the base table.

And finally this gives a pretty in-depth explanation about lock escalation in SQL Server 2005 which was changed in SQL Server 2008.

There is also, the very in depth: Locking in The Database Engine (in books online)

So, in general

UPDATE
Employees WITH (ROWLOCK)
SET Name='Mr Bean'
WHERE Age>93

Should be ok, but depending on the indexes and load on the server it may end up escalating to a page lock.