Running UPDATE Statements In Parallel On The Same Table

Hi all,

Does an UPDATE statment lock the entire table or just the rows that will be affected by the UPDATE?

I ask because -

Can I run UPDATE statements in parallel on the same table on the same column. The need for doing this is because the table is a large fact table. I plan to execute the same UPDATE statements on different time sections of the data to expedite the processing.

If the UPDATE statment lock the entire table then I cannot run an UPDATE in parallel. If the UPDATE statement just locks the rows that will be affected then maybe I can because rows affected will be different for each UPDATE.

Let me know.

Thanks,

Vivek