INF: Lock Escalation Does Not Block If a Wait Is Required

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In SQL Server 6.0, 6.0 Service Pack 1, and 6.0 Service Pack2, a process would block on a request for an escalation to a table lock if the request for a table lock would cause the process to be blocked. In some situations, this could have resulted in a deadlock situation, and one of the processes would encounter the following error (based on the standard rules for deadlock victim processing):

In SQL Server 6.0 Service Pack 3 and SQL Server 6.5, the lock manager has been changed to continue requesting page locks if a table lock escalation would be blocked. The server continues to attempt to escalate to a table lock as long as new page locks are needed. This way, a normal lock escalation can occur once the other process frees its locks.

See the SQL documentation in the "Administrator's Companion" for more details about lock types and configuration values to control lock escalations.