= Distributed Locks

== Overview

Ignite transactions acquire distributed locks implicitly. However, there are certain use cases when you might need to
acquire the locks explicitly. The `lock()` method of the `IgniteCache` API returns an instance of `java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock`
that lets you define explicit distributed locks for any given key. Locks can also be acquired on a collection of objects using the
`IgniteCache.lockAll()` method.

[tabs]
--
tab:Java[]
[source, java]
----
IgniteCache<String, Integer> cache = ignite.cache("myCache");

// Create a lock for the given key
Lock lock = cache.lock("keyLock");
try {
    // Acquire the lock
    lock.lock();

    cache.put("Hello", 11);
    cache.put("World", 22);
}
finally {
    // Release the lock
    lock.unlock();
}
----
--

[NOTE]
====
[discrete]
=== Atomicity Mode
In Ignite, locks are supported only for the `TRANSACTIONAL` atomicity mode, which can be set via the
`CacheConfiguration.atomicityMode` parameter.
====

== Locks and Transactions

Explicit locks are not transactional and cannot not be used from within transactions (exception will be thrown).
If you do need explicit locking within transactions, then you should use the `TransactionConcurrency.PESSIMISTIC` concurrency
control for transactions which will acquire explicit locks for relevant cluster data requests.