Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Intent Locks

Intent locks do not really constitute a locking mode; rather, they act as a mechanism to indicate at a higher level of granularity the types of locks held at a lower level. The types of intent locks mirror the lock types previously discussed: shared intent locks, exclusive intent locks, and update intent locks. SQL Server Lock Manager uses intent locks as a mechanism to indicate that a shared, update, or exclusive lock is held at a lower level. For example, a shared intent lock on a table by a process signifies that the process currently holds a shared lock on a row or page within the table. The presence of the intent lock prevents other transactions from attempting to acquire a table-level lock that would be incompatible with the ...