Techniques for providing locks for file operations in a database management system

Abstract

A method and apparatus for performing file system operation locks at a database server is provided. A request to perform a file operation on a portion of a file managed by a database server is received at the database server. In response to receiving the request, the database server grants a lock that covers only a portion of the file that is involved in the file operation. For example, the database server may grant a lock that covers a range of bytes on the file, where the range of bytes is less than the entire file. Thereafter, the database server performs the file operation on the file. The file operation may be a NFS operation.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.