Why is SQL Server 2008 blocking SELECT's on long transaction INSERT's?

Question

We are trying to have a transactional table that only takes new records inserted on a regular basis.

This simple table requires us to continuously add new records to it

Answer 1

I also ran into this issue. After investigation, it seemed to be that it was not the data that was locked per se, but the clustered index that was being modified as a result of the insert. Since the clustered index resides on the data pages, the associated data rows are locked as well.