Re: table level locking different in 7.0?

Jim Mercer <jim@reptiles.org> writes:
> i had several concurrent processes which would do inserts via COPY and
> queries.
> on that system, i don't recall the COPY processes as being blocked by the 
> query processes.
> now i'm running that app on solaris 7 with pgsql 7.0.
> i'm finding that a big long select is blocking other processes which
> are doing COPY's.

Hmm.  In 7.0, COPY IN acquires an exclusive lock on the target table,
which is something I put in in a fit of paranoia.  It may not really
be necessary --- probably a regular write lock would be good enough.
(6.5's COPY code neglected to acquire any lock at all, which is surely
*not* good enough, but maybe I overreacted.)

Comments anyone?
        regards, tom lane