Programming for a multiuser environment

This section describes several programming issues you need to be aware of when you work in a multiuser environment.

If your database is contained in a single-user workstation and does not access data from another computer, your programs can modify data freely. In all other cases, you must allow for the possibility that, while your program is modifying data, another program is reading or modifying the same data. This situation is described as concurrency: two or more independent uses of the same data at the same time. This section addresses concurrency, locking, and isolation levels.

This section also describes the statement cache feature, which can reduce per-session memory allocation and speed up query processing. The statement cache stores statements that can then be shared among different user sessions that use identical SQL statements.