• Why is this a problem? If you want to select everything from a table, then you need a lock on the whole table. It doesn't matter whether that's one table lock or several page locks. Probably the best solution would be for you not to use SELECT * FROM queries: only return the columns you need, and use a WHERE clause to filter out the rows that you need, and make sure you have appropriate indexes in order to keep transactions as short as possible. You may consider using the NOLOCK hint or changing the transaction isolation level, but be sure that you understand the implications of this before you do it.

    John