Question

I have recently started a fairly large web project which is going to use MySQL as a database. I am not completely familiar with MySQL, but I know enough to make simple queries and generally do all that I need to.

I was told that I needed to lock my tables before writing to them? Is this necessary every time? Surely MySQL would have some sort of built in feature to handle concurrent reading and writing of the database?

In short, when should I use locking, and how should I go about doing so?

Answer 1

Here is an excellent explanation of when and how to implement locking: http://www.brainbell.com/tutors/php/php_mysql/When_and_how_to_lock_tables.html

As per El yobo’s suggestion:

If you are doing one off select querys, there is not going to be a problem.
From the article:

Locking is required only when
developing scripts that first read a
value from a database and later write
that value to the database.