Opportunistic Locks

An opportunistic lock (also called an oplock) is a lock placed by a client on a file residing on a server. In most cases, a client requests an opportunistic lock so it can cache data locally, thus reducing network traffic and improving apparent response time. Opportunistic locks are used by network redirectors on clients with remote servers, as well as by client applications on local servers.

Opportunistic locks coordinate data caching and coherency between clients and servers and among multiple clients. Data that is coherent is data that is the same across the network. In other words, if data is coherent, data on the server and all the clients is synchronized.

Opportunistic locks are not commands by the client to the server. They are requests from the client to the server. From the point of view of the client, they are opportunistic. In other words, the server grants such locks whenever other factors make the locks possible.

When a local application requests access to a remote file, the implementation of opportunistic locks is transparent to the application. The network redirector and the server involved open and close the opportunistic locks automatically. However, opportunistic locks can also be used when a local application requests access to a local file, and access by other applications and processes must be delegated to prevent corruption of the file. In this case, the local application directly requests an opportunistic lock from the local file system and caches the file locally. When used in this way, the opportunistic lock is effectively a semaphore managed by the local server, and is mainly used for the purposes of data coherency in the file and file access notification.