Everything You Know About Isolation Levels Is Wrong

Erik Darling

You’ve been told that NOLOCK hints are bad, so you look at all the queries your developers write and hang your head in shame. A NOLOCK hint here, a NOLOCK there, a NOLOCK hint seemingly everywhere. Like termites, eating at the foundation of your well-being.

But in the real world, how are you supposed to remove those all those yucky hints without blocking and deadlocking causing huge problems?

I’m Erik Darling, and I’m a world class NOLOCK hint removal expert, and in this demo-heavy session, I’ll change your mind about every isolation level.

You’re going to learn why:
* Read Committed is nearly as weak as Read Uncommitted
* Optimistic isolation levels aren’t incorrect-result factories
* Repeatable Read isn’t what it sounds like
* Serializable isn’t the enemy of concurrency
* You don’t need to worry about tempdb’s version store
* No isolation level is perfect for every workload

At the end, you’ll have the confidence and knowledge to start turning on optimistic isolation levels and stop hanging NOLOCK hints all over your queries like Christmas tree ornaments.