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here is a great deal of confusion about the WITH NOLOCK query hint. The following is a transcription of a conversation that I had on the SQL Data Partners Podcast #57 about the WITH NOLOCK hint, and some of the misconceptions about it.
Carlos: So the next on is the WITH NOLOCK hint and I think this is on the list, ultimately, because there’s a lot of misinformation out there.
Steve: Absolutely, yes. The NOLOCK hint is one of my peeves on SQL Server, actually. I see it used a lot and really 99 percent of the time I see it used, people think that it’s doing something different than what it does. So, I heard the statement, “But I want to run a query in the production system but not impact or block anyone else. Shouldn’t I just use NOLOCK?” And the answer there is NO. The NOLOCK hint tells SQL Server to ignore other people’s query locks. Basically, to read dirty or uncommitted data at that point, which can lead to missing rows or phantom rows or data showing up in results. But it doesn’t do anything to stop the locking or the blocking in any way on the query that’s calling it. So it’s the equivalent of saying read uncommitted on a specific table that it’s referencing.
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