Question about row level locking with InnoDB tables

[Steve McWilliams]

Hello,

I am relatively new to MySql (4.0.14) but I have read through the relevent
documentation and am still confused about how row level locking behaves
with InnoDB tables.

I created a database with a single innodb table which has 2 columns, one
of which is indexed. The locking behavior I see when I test against this
database is that it uses row level locks if the "SELECT ... FOR UPDATE"
involves the indexed column, but uses table level locks if instead it
involves the non-indexed column.

For example, if I have 2 mysql clients that perform the following operations:

client1> set autocommit=0;
client1> begin;
client1> SELECT my_column FROM my_table WHERE my_column = 1 FOR UPDATE;
client2> set autocommit=0;
client2> begin:
client2> SELECT my_column FROM my_table WHERE my_column = 2 FOR UPDATE;

The above query by client2 will block if the column in question is not
indexed, implying that client1 has somehow locked the entire table, even
though client1 and client2 are selecting different rows.

Am I misconfiguring something, or does InnoDB simply only support row
level locking when you are selecting indexed rows?

Thanks in advance,

Steve McWilliams
Software Engineer
Emprisa Networks
703-691-0433x21
sm*********@emprisanetworks.com

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