drupal moving from local host to live server - error
When creating database exports, the tables are usually locked to ensure that there are no attempts to access or change data within the tables while they are being exported and imported. Those locks will usually be released at the end of the import process. That obviously did not happen for your database.

Most likely your database import in phpmyadmin timed out and did not complete the import process. Check the tables available in phpmyadmin and see if there are the same number of tables as on your local server. If the data appears to be properly intact on the production server, then you will need to manually unlock the tables.