The Table Lock Approach
The “table lock” approach is used when there are unsolvable locking issues. The philosophy behind the approach says that it is better to have users queue for a table lock, than to have to roll back and retry deadlocked transactions.
This approach is appropriate when extensive table scanning is needed, such as finding max and min values.
In multiple query transactions, table-level locks reduce the likelihood of deadlocks but do not eliminate them. The following statement reduces the likelihood of deadlock in a multiple query transaction:
set lockmode on EMP where level = table;