Data Concurrency and Locks

Ahmed Naguib
ORACLE administration by Ahmed Naguib
 Objectives

After completing this lesson, you should be able to:

• Describe the locking mechanism and how Oracle manages
data concurrency
• Monitor and resolve locking conflicts

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 Concurrency and consistency

• Data concurrency means that many users can access data

at the same time.
• Data consistency means that each user sees a consistent
view of the data, including visible changes made by the
user's own transactions and transactions of other users.

User

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 Locks

• Prevent multiple sessions from changing the same data at

the same time
• Are automatically obtained at the lowest possible level for
a given statement
• Do not escalate

Transaction 1 Transaction 2
SQL> UPDATE employees SQL> UPDATE employees
2 SET salary=salary+100 2 SET salary=salary*1.1
3 WHERE employee_id=100; 3 WHERE employee_id=100;

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 Locking Mechanism

• High level of data concurrency:

– Row-level locks for inserts, updates, and deletes
– No locks required for queries
• Automatic queue management
• Locks held until the transaction ends (with a commit or
rollback operation)
Example
Assume that the rows for EMPLOYEE_ID 100 and 101 reside in the same
block:

Transaction 1 Transaction 2
SQL> UPDATE employees SQL> UPDATE employees
2 SET salary=salary+100 2 SET salary=salary*1.1
3 WHERE employee_id=100; 3 WHERE employee_id=101;

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 Ahmed Naguib
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 Data Concurrency

Time: Transaction 1 UPDATE hr.employees

SET salary=salary+100
WHERE employee_id=100;
Transaction 2 UPDATE hr.employees
SET salary=salary+100
WHERE employee_id=101;
09:00:00 Transaction 3 UPDATE hr.employees
SET salary=salary+100
WHERE employee_id=102;
... ...
Transaction x UPDATE hr.employees
SET salary=salary+100
WHERE employee_id=xxx;

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 DML Locks

Transaction 1 Transaction 2
SQL> UPDATE employees SQL> UPDATE employees
2 SET salary=salary*1.1 2 SET salary=salary*1.1
3 WHERE employee_id= 107; 3 WHERE employee_id= 106;
1 row updated. 1 row updated.

Each DML transaction must acquire two locks:

• EXCLUSIVE row lock on the row or rows being updated
• Table lock (TM) in ROW EXCLUSIVE (RX) mode on the
table containing the rows

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 Enqueue Mechanism

The enqueue mechanism keeps track of:

• Sessions waiting for locks
• Requested lock mode
• Order in which sessions requested the lock

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 Lock Conflicts

Transaction 1 Time Transaction 2

UPDATE employees SET 9:00:00 UPDATE employees SET
salary=salary+100 WHERE salary=salary+100 WHERE
employee_id=100; employee_id=101;
1 row updated. 1 row updated.
UPDATE employees SET 9:00:05 SELECT sum(salary) FROM
COMMISION_PCT=2 WHERE employees;
employee_id=101; SUM(SALARY)
Session waits enqueued due to -----------
lock conflict. 692634
Session still waiting! Many selects, inserts, updates,
16:30:00 and deletes during the last 7.5
hours, but no commits or
rollbacks!
1 row updated. 16:30:01 commit;
Session continues.

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 Possible Causes of Lock Conflicts

• Uncommitted changes
• Long-running transactions
• Unnecessarily high locking levels

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 Detecting Lock Conflicts

• Select Blocking Sessions from the Performance menu.

• Click the Session ID link to view information about the

locking session.
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 Resolving Lock Conflicts

To resolve a lock conflict:

• Have the session holding the lock commit or roll back
• Terminate the session holding the lock (in an emergency)

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 Resolving Lock Conflicts by Using SQL

SQL statements can be used to determine the blocking session

and kill it.

SQL> SELECT sid, serial#, username

1 2 FROM v$session WHERE sid IN
3 (SELECT blocking_session FROM v$session);

Result:

2 SQL> ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION '144,8982' immediate;

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 Deadlocks

Transaction 1 Transaction 2
UPDATE employees UPDATE employees
SET salary = salary x 1.1 9:00 SET manager = 1342
WHERE employee_id = 1000; WHERE employee_id = 2000;
UPDATE employees UPDATE employees
SET salary = salary x 1.1 9:15 SET manager = 1342
WHERE employee_id = 2000; WHERE employee_id = 1000;
ORA-00060:
Deadlock detected while 9:16
waiting for resource

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 Ahmed Naguib
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 Quiz

The lock mechanism defaults to a fine-grained,

row-level locking mode.
a. True
b. False

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 Quiz

When a deadlock occurs, Oracle database

automatically:
a. Waits 300 seconds before terminating both sessions
b. Terminates one statement with an error in one session
c. Terminates the statements with an error in both sessions
d. Takes no action by default and leaves it to the DBA

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 Summary

In this lesson, you should have learned how to:

• Describe the locking mechanism and how Oracle manages
data concurrency
• Monitor and resolve locking conflicts

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 Practice: Overview

This practice covers the following topics:

• Identifying locking conflicts
• Resolving locking conflicts

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