How to choose between optimistic locking, guarded updates, and SELECT FOR UPDATE in SQL when concurrent requests can overwrite data, oversell inventory, or serialize hot rows.
A practical guide to SQL isolation levels, including Read Committed, Repeatable Read, Serializable, database-specific behavior, locking trade-offs, and production examples.
Why a database index can exist and still fail to speed up a query, including selectivity, row estimates, composite index order, post-index filters, ORDER BY LIMIT behavior, partial indexes, and production verification.