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Who Is Holding The Lock On The Table - DBA Paradise

This document provides information about database table locking and how to identify which session is locking a table that is preventing it from being dropped. It explains the different types of locks used in databases to maintain consistency. It then provides a SQL script that can be used to identify the session ID, username, and type of lock held on a table. Signing up allows access to a guide on troubleshooting SQL performance issues.

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14 views8 pages

Who Is Holding The Lock On The Table - DBA Paradise

This document provides information about database table locking and how to identify which session is locking a table that is preventing it from being dropped. It explains the different types of locks used in databases to maintain consistency. It then provides a SQL script that can be used to identify the session ID, username, and type of lock held on a table. Signing up allows access to a guide on troubleshooting SQL performance issues.

Uploaded by

kruemeL1969
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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DBA PARADISE

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Who Is Holding The Lock On The Table?
October 10, 2018 Off  By DIANAROBETE

Did you ever get an email or a phone call from a developer telling you they are
getting an error when trying to drop a table? It sounds something like this:
“What is going on, I cannot drop table A, I am getting an error:”

SQL> drop table HR.EMPLOYEES;

drop table HR.EMPLOYEES

ERROR at line 1:

ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified or ti

The mistake that some of us do initially, is to look for blocking sessions in the
database. But the above error that the developer is getting, most likely has
nothing to do with blocking. Rather it has all to do with locking.
Why do we have locks in the database?
The database locks are in place to prevent incorrect updates of the data, or
incorrect alters of the underlying object structures, while
multiple transactions are accessing the shared data in the database. Locks are
there to help maintain the database consistency and integrity.
There are two main categories of locks:
-exclusive locks
-shared locks
There is only one exclusive lock that can be obtained on a table or row at a time.
The exclusive locks prevents the resource to be shared. An exclusive lock is
obtained when the session modifies the data.
The transaction that locks the resource in exclusive mode is the only one that can
modify the resource, until the exclusive lock is released.
There are many shared locks that can be obtained on a table or row. The sessions
that read data usually get a shared lock on the resource.
Oracle is trying to lock the resource at the lowest level possible. There are locks at
the row level and there are locks at the table level.
When you want to modify data (update one row of a table), Oracle is locking
exclusively that one row, and is locking the table in shared mode.
Other sessions can access the data (read), modify other rows in the table, but
cannot alter the structure of the table, or drop the table.
When someone is altering the resource (table), then an exclusive table lock is
obtained. If another session has already an exclusive lock on the resource, then
the exclusive table lock cannot be obtained.
Now that the locking has been understood, the error message the developer was
getting is more clear.
What you need to do to help the developer out, is to find who is holding the lock,
and in what mode. Once that information is known, you have 2 options:
– ask the “locking” user to release the lock
– kill the “locking” user’s session.
Below is a script to provide you the answer to the question: Who is locking the
table?

col object for A30

col object_type for A12

col serial# for 999999999

col osuser for A15

col lock_mode for A25

col username for A15

select

c.owner || '.' || c.object_name object,

c.object_type,

DECODE(a.locked_mode, 0, NONE

, 1, '1 - Null'

, 2, '2 - Row Share Lock'

, 3, '3 - Row Exclusive Table Lock.'

, 4, '4 - Share Table Lock'

, 5, '5 - Share Row Exclusive Table Lock.'

, 6, '6 - Exclusive Table Lock'

, locked_mode, ltrim(to_char(locked_mode,'990'))) lo
b.inst_id as node,

b.sid,

b.serial#,

b.status,

b.username,

b.osuser

from

gv$locked_object a ,

gv$session b,

dba_objects c

where b.sid = a.session_id

and a.object_id = c.object_id

and a.inst_id=b.inst_id;

--Sample Output

OBJECT OBJECT_TYPE LOCK_MODE node s


------------- ----------- ----------------------------- ----- -
HR.EMPLOYEES TABLE 3 - Row Exclusive Table Lock. 1 3

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Category Database Oracle Oracle

Tags DBA Oracle table locking

4 Comments
Mahmoud Darwish says:
October 13, 2018 at 10:41 pm

Hi Diana,
Thank you for this great article, I have a correction for the query in the decode line
as it was not working with me, so I corrected the line to be:
DECODE(a.locked_mode, 0, ‘NONE’
Also, I have a question, In most mission-critical environments, we can identify
locks, but we can’t kill the corresponding sessions because it might hold an
important financial transaction, my question is, do we have a way to unlock these
locks without killing the session?

dianarobete says:
October 25, 2018 at 10:24 am

I don’t think you will be able to release the locks without killing the session
(not that I am aware of)

Alberto Farias says:


October 16, 2018 at 10:07 am

NONE Is NULL —> “DECODE(a.locked_mode, 0, NULL”

Understanding Why ORA-04021 TIMEOUT OCCURRED WHILE WAITING TO


LOCK OBJECT Happens – DBA Paradise says:
June 6, 2019 at 9:52 pm

[…] You can start your troubleshooting by checking regular blocking/locking


issues. I wrote about that in a previous blog post, Who Is Holding The Lock On The
Table? […]

Comments are closed.

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