Why is SQL Server 2008 blocking SELECT's on long transaction INSERT's?

Question

We are trying to have a transactional table that only takes new records inserted on a regular basis.

This simple table requires us to continuously add new records to it

Answer 1

This exists in MySQL too. Here's the logic behind it: if you perform a SELECT on some data, you expect it to operate on an up-to-date dataset. That's why INSERT results in a table-level lock (that is unless the engine is able to perform row-level locking, like innodb can). There are ways to disable this behaviour, so that you can do "dirty reads", but they all are software (or even database-engine) specific.