i reread your emails, are you thinking something like this: 1)select * from table .... (very big) 2)update table (lock reads, very time consuming) 3)select * from table2 .... (very small, but i/o is very high and it will be very time consuming) questions: 1)you want to pause 1 or 2 or 3? 2)maybe you want to pause 1 and 2, to make 3 faster since i/o? 3)after pausing a select, we can't execute update since select lock for read, and update for write, (maybe a row level lock allow it, but i think sometimes it can't do and update (2) will wait (1) end to start it job) ------- there's some MDEV maybe it's what you need? MDEV-4623 <https://mariadb.atlassian.net/browse/MDEV-4623> - lock/unlock connection (maybe this one) MDEV-4427 <https://mariadb.atlassian.net/browse/MDEV-4427> - twitter like patch