If you want to read records regardless of whether they are locked by other users, you can use a third NO-LOCK option. This option lets you read a record without ever being prevented from doing so by another user's lock. If you do not intend to update the record and are simply reading the data, this is an appropriate option. You must always be aware that reading records with NO-LOCK means that you might read parts of an incomplete transaction that has written some but not all of its changes to the database. In some cases, you can even read a record that has been newly written to the database with its key fields and index information, but not with the changes to other fields in the record. NO-LOCK is the default locking level for queries that have an associated browse, since you would normally not want to lock a whole set of records simply to browse them.

You cannot upgrade a record's lock level from NO-LOCK to EXCLUSIVE-LOCK. If you try to update a record you read with NO-LOCK, you get an error message from the AVM, such as the one shown in the following figure.

Figure 1. NO-LOCK error message

You must FIND the record again with an EXCLUSIVE-LOCK if you need to update it.