What is the best default transaction isolation level for an ERP, if any?

Question

Short background: We are just starting to migrate/reimplement an ERP system to Java with Hibernate, targeting a concurrent user count of 50-100 users using the system. We use MS

Answer 1

It really depends a lot on how you design your application, the easy answer is just run at READ_COMMITTED.

You can make an argument that if you design your system with it in mind that you could use READ_UNCOMMITTED as the default and only increase the isolation level when you need it. The vast majority of your transactions are going to succeed anyway so reading uncommitted data won't be a big deal.

The way isolation levels effect your queries depends on your target database. For instance databases like Sybase and MSSQL must lock more resources when you run READ_COMMITTED, than databases like Oracle.