We can give locking hints that helps you over ride default decision made by SQL Server. For instance, you can specify the ROWLOCK hint with your UPDATE statement to convince SQL Server to lock each row affected by that data modification. Whether it is prudent to do so is another story; what will happen if your UPDATE affects 95% of rows in the affected table? If the table contains 1000 rows, then SQL Server will have to acquire 950 individual locks, which is likely to cost a lot more in terms of memory than acquiring a single table lock. So think twice before you bombard your code with ROWLOCKS.
