Oracle Database Discussions

The below quote is from 10g Concepts.

Lock escalation occurs when numerous locks are held at one level of granularity (for example, rows) and a database raises the locks to a higher level of granularity (for example, table). For example, if a single user locks many rows in a table, some databases automatically escalate the user's row locks to a single table. The number of locks is reduced, but the restrictiveness of what is being locked is increased.

Oracle never escalates locks. Lock escalation greatly increases the likelihood of deadlocks....".

Does this mean that you can design your database to escalate locks but such behavior is not inherent of Oracle? Any clarification is appreciated.

Matt

Sybrand Bakker need not reply.