NAME

       LOCK - lock a table

SYNOPSIS

       LOCK [ TABLE ] [ ONLY ] name [ * ] [, ...] [ IN lockmode MODE ] [ NOWAIT ]

       where lockmode is one of:

           ACCESS SHARE | ROW SHARE | ROW EXCLUSIVE | SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE
           | SHARE | SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE | EXCLUSIVE | ACCESS EXCLUSIVE

DESCRIPTION

       LOCK TABLE obtains a table-level lock, waiting if necessary for any conflicting locks to be released. If
       NOWAIT is specified, LOCK TABLE does not wait to acquire the desired lock: if it cannot be acquired
       immediately, the command is aborted and an error is emitted. Once obtained, the lock is held for the
       remainder of the current transaction. (There is no UNLOCK TABLE command; locks are always released at
       transaction end.)

       When a view is locked, all relations appearing in the view definition query are also locked recursively
       with the same lock mode.

       When acquiring locks automatically for commands that reference tables, PostgreSQL always uses the least
       restrictive lock mode possible.  LOCK TABLE provides for cases when you might need more restrictive
       locking. For example, suppose an application runs a transaction at the READ COMMITTED isolation level and
       needs to ensure that data in a table remains stable for the duration of the transaction. To achieve this
       you could obtain SHARE lock mode over the table before querying. This will prevent concurrent data
       changes and ensure subsequent reads of the table see a stable view of committed data, because SHARE lock
       mode conflicts with the ROW EXCLUSIVE lock acquired by writers, and your LOCK TABLE name IN SHARE MODE
       statement will wait until any concurrent holders of ROW EXCLUSIVE mode locks commit or roll back. Thus,
       once you obtain the lock, there are no uncommitted writes outstanding; furthermore none can begin until
       you release the lock.

       To achieve a similar effect when running a transaction at the REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE isolation
       level, you have to execute the LOCK TABLE statement before executing any SELECT or data modification
       statement. A REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE transaction's view of data will be frozen when its first
       SELECT or data modification statement begins. A LOCK TABLE later in the transaction will still prevent
       concurrent writes — but it won't ensure that what the transaction reads corresponds to the latest
       committed values.

       If a transaction of this sort is going to change the data in the table, then it should use SHARE ROW
       EXCLUSIVE lock mode instead of SHARE mode. This ensures that only one transaction of this type runs at a
       time. Without this, a deadlock is possible: two transactions might both acquire SHARE mode, and then be
       unable to also acquire ROW EXCLUSIVE mode to actually perform their updates. (Note that a transaction's
       own locks never conflict, so a transaction can acquire ROW EXCLUSIVE mode when it holds SHARE mode — but
       not if anyone else holds SHARE mode.) To avoid deadlocks, make sure all transactions acquire locks on the
       same objects in the same order, and if multiple lock modes are involved for a single object, then
       transactions should always acquire the most restrictive mode first.

       More information about the lock modes and locking strategies can be found in Section 13.3.

PARAMETERS

       name
           The name (optionally schema-qualified) of an existing table to lock. If ONLY is specified before the
           table name, only that table is locked. If ONLY is not specified, the table and all its descendant
           tables (if any) are locked. Optionally, * can be specified after the table name to explicitly
           indicate that descendant tables are included.

           The command LOCK TABLE a, b; is equivalent to LOCK TABLE a; LOCK TABLE b;. The tables are locked
           one-by-one in the order specified in the LOCK TABLE command.

       lockmode
           The lock mode specifies which locks this lock conflicts with. Lock modes are described in
           Section 13.3.

           If no lock mode is specified, then ACCESS EXCLUSIVE, the most restrictive mode, is used.

       NOWAIT
           Specifies that LOCK TABLE should not wait for any conflicting locks to be released: if the specified
           lock(s) cannot be acquired immediately without waiting, the transaction is aborted.

NOTES

       To lock a table, the user must have the right privilege for the specified lockmode. If the user has
       MAINTAIN, UPDATE, DELETE, or TRUNCATE privileges on the table, any lockmode is permitted. If the user has
       INSERT privileges on the table, ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE (or a less-conflicting mode as described in
       Section 13.3) is permitted. If a user has SELECT privileges on the table, ACCESS SHARE MODE is permitted.

       The user performing the lock on the view must have the corresponding privilege on the view. In addition,
       by default, the view's owner must have the relevant privileges on the underlying base relations, whereas
       the user performing the lock does not need any permissions on the underlying base relations. However, if
       the view has security_invoker set to true (see CREATE VIEW), the user performing the lock, rather than
       the view owner, must have the relevant privileges on the underlying base relations.

       LOCK TABLE is useless outside a transaction block: the lock would remain held only to the completion of
       the statement. Therefore PostgreSQL reports an error if LOCK is used outside a transaction block. Use
       BEGIN and COMMIT (or ROLLBACK) to define a transaction block.

       LOCK TABLE only deals with table-level locks, and so the mode names involving ROW are all misnomers.
       These mode names should generally be read as indicating the intention of the user to acquire row-level
       locks within the locked table. Also, ROW EXCLUSIVE mode is a shareable table lock. Keep in mind that all
       the lock modes have identical semantics so far as LOCK TABLE is concerned, differing only in the rules
       about which modes conflict with which. For information on how to acquire an actual row-level lock, see
       Section 13.3.2 and The Locking Clause in the SELECT(7) documentation.

EXAMPLES

       Obtain a SHARE lock on a primary key table when going to perform inserts into a foreign key table:

           BEGIN WORK;
           LOCK TABLE films IN SHARE MODE;
           SELECT id FROM films
               WHERE name = 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace';
           -- Do ROLLBACK if record was not returned
           INSERT INTO films_user_comments VALUES
               (_id_, 'GREAT! I was waiting for it for so long!');
           COMMIT WORK;

       Take a SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE lock on a primary key table when going to perform a delete operation:

           BEGIN WORK;
           LOCK TABLE films IN SHARE ROW EXCLUSIVE MODE;
           DELETE FROM films_user_comments WHERE id IN
               (SELECT id FROM films WHERE rating < 5);
           DELETE FROM films WHERE rating < 5;
           COMMIT WORK;

COMPATIBILITY

       There is no LOCK TABLE in the SQL standard, which instead uses SET TRANSACTION to specify concurrency
       levels on transactions.  PostgreSQL supports that too; see SET TRANSACTION (SET_TRANSACTION(7)) for
       details.

       Except for ACCESS SHARE, ACCESS EXCLUSIVE, and SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock modes, the PostgreSQL lock
       modes and the LOCK TABLE syntax are compatible with those present in Oracle.

PostgreSQL 17.5                                       2025                                               LOCK(7)