Version 6 locking with INSERT stmnts

Page 12-25 of the Version 6.0 DBA Guide states that:

"If ROW_LOCKING is set to ALWAYS (the default value for ORACLE with the transaction processing option) and you change data in a table (via INSERT, UPDATE, or DELETE), then other users can update other rows in the same table while your transaction is active".

On our system (Version 6.0.36.7 with TPO running under VMS) this does not apply to INSERT statements when the table concerned has at least one unique index. In this case the first user to INSERT obtains an exclusive lock and other users who try to INSERT have to wait. Since we have several applications performing INSERTs and we have unique indexes on all primary keys, we see no improvement over Version 5 so far as lock contention is concerned. Sigh.

Can anyone confirm that this is indeed the case, or are we missing something?

David Hazledine                                                EMBL Data Library
Database Administrator                                                PF 10.2209
EMBL Data Library                                       6900 Heidelberg, Germany

Internet: Hazledine_at_EMBL-Heidelberg.DE