Is a dirty read possible _without_ a transaction? (READ UNCOMMITTED)

Hi, I have a very contentious table, let's say it has two columns, user_id and balance, where balance is an account balance.

I use FOR UPDATE, and transactions etc when doing a transfer between two users, but in certain cases when I do "select balance from tbl where user_id = ?" I want this to be a dirty read. I don't want it to care about any locks... i.e. READ UNCOMMITTED. However, it seems like I actually need to enlist in a transaction to do this? Is there any hint I can give on the SQL itself that avoids the transaction overhead?

Thanks,



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2008 12:42PM by .