Having actually deployed and used SQL Server extensively, I know how it handles "multi-version read consistency": As I tell it to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en

Having actually deployed and used SQL Server extensively, I know how it handles "multi-version read consistency": As I tell it to: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173763.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms173763.aspx In addition to setting a database level default, you can even have it behave differently per connection. Snapshot isolation will never lock, period. SQL Server is actually quite capable, and has the fantastic tooling that cheaper alternatives like PostgreSQL lack.