• There are circumstances, however, where it would
be advantageous to group several data items, and
to treat them as one individual synchronization
unit.
– For example, if a transaction Ti needs to access the
entire database, and a locking protocol is used, then Ti
must lock each item in the database.
– Clearly, executing these locks is time-consuming. It
would be better if Ti could issue a single lock request to
lock the entire database.
– On the other hand, if transaction Tj needs to access
only a few data items, it should not be required to lock
the entire database, since otherwise concurrency is
lost.