Retrieve Rows As Needed

I thought I might try this to help provide a performance boost for my app but have discovered that it does introduce locking issues that cause it to freeze when trying to update tables.

In doing research I found this:

"In your transaction object, if you set sqlca.lock = 'RU' it will prevent the shared locks on the rows when using retrieve as needed."

Two questions:

1. is this a OK way to resolve this issue?  Side-effects?

2. Is Retrieve Rows as Needed one of htose features it's better to just ignore?

Thanks all.