myisam place table-lock on table even when dealing with 'select' query?
i am reading the book High Performance MySQL , it mentions: performing one query per table uses table locks more efficiently: the queries will lock the tables invididually and relatively briefly, instead of locking them all for a longer time. MyISAM places table-lock even when selecting something? can someone explain a little bit? MyISAM has different kinds of locks. A SELECT operation places a READ LOCK on the table. There can be multiple active read locks at any given time, as long as there are no active WRITE LOCKS . Operations that modify the table, eg. INSERT , UPDATE , DELETE or ALTER