New Features: Optimized Locking

I hope everyone has a great holiday season. I am excited to share some insights from a recent article on the Microsoft Tech Community blog about a feature in Azure SQL Database that will also be introduced in SQL Server 2025: Optimized Locking. 

Optimized locking is designed to enhance workload concurrency by reducing lock memory usage and minimizing lock escalation. This feature is particularly beneficial for Data Modification Language (DML) statements such as INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and MERGE. By enabling optimized locking, you can expect improved performance and reduced contention in your databases. 

Key points to note:

• Lock Memory Usage Reduction: Optimized locking helps in quickly releasing locks, thereby reducing lock memory usage.
• Improved Concurrency: With less likelihood of lock escalation, your workloads can run more smoothly and efficiently.
• Availability: This feature is available in all service tiers and compute sizes of Azure SQL Database and SQL database in Microsoft Fabric. It will become available in Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server 2025 in Spring of 2025.
• Requirements: Optimized locking requires accelerated database recovery (ADR) and read committed snapshot isolation (RCSI) to be enabled on the database. Both of these options are enabled by default in Azure SQL Database. 

Find out more information about Optimized Locking: Optimized Locking – SQL Server | Microsoft Learn

For a detailed demonstration check out: Microsoft Tech Community blog.