Locking and Indices

Though Postgres provides unblocking read/write access to table data, unblocked read/write access is not provided for every index access methods implemented in Postgres.

The various index types are handled as follows:

GiST and R-Tree indices

Share/exclusive index-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released after statement is done.

Hash indices

Share/exclusive page-level locks are used for read/write access. Locks are released after page is processed.

Page-level locks produces better concurrency than index-level ones but are subject to deadlocks.

Btree

Short-term share/exclusive page-level latches are used for read/write access. Latches are released immediately after the index tuple is inserted/fetched.

Btree indices provide the highest concurrency without deadlock conditions.