Optimistic vs. Pessimistic locking

Question

I understand the differences between optimistic and pessimistic locking. Now could someone explain to me when I would use either one in general?

And does the answer

Answer 1

One use case for optimistic locking is to have your application use the database to allow one of your threads / hosts to 'claim' a task. This is a technique that has come in handy for me on a regular basis.

The best example I can think of is for a task queue implemented using a database, with multiple threads claiming tasks concurrently. If a task has status 'Available', 'Claimed', 'Completed', a db query can say something like "Set status='Claimed' where status='Available'. If multiple threads try to change the status in this way, all but the first thread will fail because of dirty data.

Note that this is a use case involving only optimistic locking. So as an alternative to saying "Optimistic locking is used when you don't expect many collisions", it can also be used where you expect collisions but want exactly one transaction to succeed.