Implicit locking In concurrency theory, locking is used for protecting mutable shared data against hazardous data integrity anomalies. Because lock management is a very complex problem, most applications rely on their data provider implicit locking techniques. Delegating the whole locking responsibility to the database system can both simplify application development and prevent concurrency issues, such as deadlocking. Deadlocks can still occur, but the database can detect and take safety measures (arbitrarily releasing one of the two competing locks).