File Extension LCK

File type: Database Access Control File or Lock File

About the LCK file type:

If Windows cannot find the appropriate program associated with .LCK files, then your registry may have errors. Check your Windows registry for errors (includes file association errors).

LCK file extension is a very common file extension used by various applications such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Autodesk, Corel, Pmail, FrontPage, and several Database Management Systems for locking the files in question to ensure that they aren't editable by several users simultaneously in order to ensure consistency of the data within the file.


Detailed information for file extension LCK

Category: Data File.
File format: Proprietary
Open with Windows: Referenced by various applications
During remote file editing through FTP or while editing files on a multi user operating systems it is often necessary to ensure that files are editable only by a single user at a time in order to ensure that the data on the file doesn't get conflicting changes made by multiple users at the same time resulting in loss of data. Hence several software systems employ this locking mechanism wherein they lock the files they are editing while the file is being edited by the software and no other user can then edit the file during that time. Other users may open the file as a read-only and may read the contents of the file but may not be able to edit the contents of the file. Once the user has finished editing the file the lock on the resource is released and the file can then be opened by other users for editing.