The Downsides of SELECT FOR UPDATE in PostgreSQL

Laurenz Albe explains why SELECT FOR UPDATE is rarely the right call:

Recently, while investigating a deadlock for a customer, I was again reminded how harmful SELECT FOR UPDATE can be for database concurrency. This is nothing new, but I find that many people don’t know about the PostgreSQL row lock modes. So here I’ll write up a detailed explanation to let you know when to avoid SELECT FOR UPDATE.

Click through for the full explanation.