title: When to LOCK TABLES in MySQL (MyISAM tables)?
body: <p>Is the <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/internal-locking.html" rel="nofollow">internal locking of MySQL</a> sufficient for a small to medium sized website? My tables are MyISAM. There might be a few hundred people concurrently hitting a specific table with SELECT'S and INSERT's. None of the INSERT/UPDATE queries would overlap. That is, no two users will be updating the same comment ID. INSERT's/UPDATE's would be one-off operations---there would be no reading of data and performing additional operations within the same query.</p>
  
  <p>Specifically, I am setting up a comment/chat system for my website. At worst, there might be a couple of hundred people performing a SELECT statement on the comment/chat tables in order to read new posts. With respect to INSERT's, there might be 100(?) different people trying to INSERT a new comment at any time.</p>
  
  <p>I found <a href="http://www.brainbell.com/tutors/php/php_mysql/When_and_how_to_lock_tables.html" rel="nofollow">this article</a> in another question on SO, and it states that LOCK TABLES is "never required for self-contained insert, update, or delete operations." Is this good practice for the amount of DB traffic that I might have? TIA for any advice.</p>