Lock Waits

When a user encounters a lock, the default behavior of a database server is to return an error to the application. You can execute the following SQL statement to wait indefinitely for a lock:

SET LOCK MODE TO WAIT; 

You can also wait for a specific number of seconds, as in the following example:

SET LOCK MODE TO WAIT 20;

To return to the default behavior (no waiting for locks), execute the following statement:

SET LOCK MODE TO NOT WAIT;