Erik Darling has some thoughts:
And generally, the more NOLOCK hints I see, the more money I know I’m going to make.
It shows me four things right off the bat:
- The developers need a lot of training
- The code needs a lot of tuning
- The indexes need a lot of adjusting
- There are probably some serious bugs in the software
Perhaps the only other thing that signals just how badly someone needs a lot of help is hearing “we’re an Entity Framework only shop”.
Cha-ching.
I have to admit, even being a consultant doesn’t soften the pain of walking into a place and seeing people use NOLOCK like they picked up a fresh pallet of it from Costco and need to use it up before it goes bad.