A method used to control access to individual records in a database.
In a multiuser environment, there is always the possibility that two users will attempt to update the same record at the same time but with different information. The initial attempt to solve this problem was to use file locking in which the first user to access the file locks out all other users and prevents them from opening the file. After the file is updated and closed again, the next user can gain access.
File locking can seriously degrade overall system performance as many users attempt to access the same files time after time. To avoid this slowdown, many database management systems use record locking, which limits access to individual records within the database files.
See also file and record locking.