Expert Oracle Database Architecture, Third Edition (2014)

Chapter 6. Locking and Latching

One of the key challenges in developing multiuser, database-driven applications is to maximize concurrent access and, at the same time, ensure that each user is able to read and modify the data in a consistent fashion. The locking mechanisms that allow this to happen are key features of any database, and Oracle excels in providing them. However, Oracle’s implementation of these features is specific to Oracle—just as SQL Server’s implementation is to SQL Server—and it is up to you, the application developer, to ensure that when your application performs data manipulation, it uses these mechanisms correctly. If you fail to do so, your application will behave in an unexpected way, and inevitably the integrity of your data will be compromised (as was demonstrated in Chapter 1).

In this chapter, we’ll take a detailed look at how Oracle locks both data (e.g., rows in tables) and shared data structures (such as those found in the SGA). We’ll investigate the granularity to which Oracle locks data and what that means to you, the developer. When appropriate, I’ll contrast Oracle’s locking scheme with other popular implementations, mostly to dispel the myth that row-level locking adds overhead; in reality, it adds overhead only if the implementation adds overhead. In the next chapter, we’ll continue this discussion and investigate Oracle’s multiversioning techniques and how locking strategies interact with them.

What Are Locks?

Locks are mechanisms used to regulate concurrent access to a shared resource. Note how I used the term “shared resource” and not “database row.” It is true that Oracle locks table data at the row level, but it also uses locks at many other levels to provide concurrent access to various resources. For example, while a stored procedure is executing, the procedure itself is locked in a mode that allows others to execute it, but it will not permit another user to alter that instance of that stored procedure in any way. Locks are used in the database to permit concurrent access to these shared resources, while at the same time providing data integrity and consistency.

In a single-user database, locks are not necessary. There is, by definition, only one user modifying the information. However, when multiple users are accessing and modifying data or data structures, it is crucial to have a mechanism in place to prevent concurrent modification of the same piece of information. This is what locking is all about.

It is very important to understand that there are as many ways to implement locking in a database as there are databases. Just because you have experience with the locking model of one particular relational database management system (RDBMS) does not mean you know everything about locking. For example, before I got heavily involved with Oracle, I used other databases including Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, and Informix. All three of these databases provide locking mechanisms for concurrency control, but there are deep and fundamental differences in the way locking is implemented in each one.

To demonstrate this, I’ll outline my progression from a Sybase SQL Server developer to an Informix user and finally to an Oracle developer. This happened many years ago, and the SQL Server fans out there will tell me “But we have row-level locking now!” It is true: SQL Server may now use row-level locking, but the way it is implemented is totally different from the way it is done in Oracle. It is a comparison between apples and oranges, and that is the key point.

As a SQL Server programmer, I would hardly ever consider the possibility of multiple users inserting data into a table concurrently. It was something that just didn’t often happen in that database. At that time, SQL Server provided only for page-level locking and, since all the data tended to be inserted into the last page of nonclustered tables, concurrent inserts by two users was simply not going to happen.

Note A SQL Server clustered table (a table that has a clustered index) is in some regard similar to, but very different from, an Oracle cluster. SQL Server used to only support page (block) level locking; if every row inserted was to go to the “end” of the table, you would never have had concurrent inserts or concurrent transactions in that database. The clustered index in SQL Server was used to insert rows all over the table, in sorted order by the cluster key, and as such improved concurrency in that database.

Exactly the same issue affected concurrent updates (since an UPDATE was really a DELETE followed by an INSERT in SQL Server). Perhaps this is why SQL Server, by default, commits or rolls back immediately after execution of each and every statement, compromising transactional integrity in an attempt to gain higher concurrency.

So in most cases, with page-level locking, multiple users could not simultaneously modify the same table. Compounding this was the fact that while a table modification was in progress, many queries were also effectively blocked against that table. If I tried to query a table and needed a page that was locked by an update, I waited (and waited and waited). The locking mechanism was so poor that providing support for transactions that took more than a second was deadly—the entire database would appear to freeze. I learned a lot of bad habits as a result. I learned that transactions were “bad” and that you ought to commit rapidly and never hold locks on data. Concurrency came at the expense of consistency. You either wanted to get it right or get it fast. I came to believe that you couldn’t have both.

When I moved on to Informix, things were better, but not by much. As long as I remembered to create a table with row-level locking enabled, then I could actually have two people simultaneously insert data into that table. Unfortunately, this concurrency came at a high price. Row-level locks in the Informix implementation were expensive, both in terms of time and memory. It took time to acquire and unacquire (release) them, and each lock consumed real memory. Also, the total number of locks available to the system had to be computed prior to starting the database. If you exceeded that number, you were just out of luck. Consequently, most tables were created with page-level locking anyway, and, as with SQL Server, both row and page-level locks would stop a query in its tracks. As a result, I found that once again I would want to commit as fast as I could. The bad habits I picked up using SQL Server were simply reinforced and, furthermore, I learned to treat a lock as a very scarce resource—something to be coveted. I learned that you should manually escalate locks from row level to table level to try to avoid acquiring too many of them and bringing the system down, and bring it down I did—many times.

When I started using Oracle, I didn’t really bother reading the manuals to find out how locking worked in this particular database. After all, I had been using databases for quite a while and was considered something of an expert in this field (in addition to Sybase, SQL Server, and Informix, I had used Ingress, DB2, Gupta SQLBase, and a variety of other databases). I had fallen into the trap of believing that I knew how things should work, so I thought of course they would work in that way. I was wrong in a big way.

It was during a benchmark that I discovered just how wrong I was. In the early days of these databases (around 1992/1993), it was common for the vendors to benchmark for really large procurements to see who could do the work the fastest, the easiest, and with the most features.

The benchmark was between Informix, Sybase SQL Server, and Oracle. Oracle went first. Their technical people came on-site, read through the benchmark specs, and started setting it up. The first thing I noticed was that the technicians from Oracle were going to use a database table to record their timings, even though we were going to have many dozens of connections doing work, each of which would frequently need to insert and update data in this log table. Not only that, but they were going to read the log table during the benchmark as well! Being a nice guy, I pulled one of the Oracle technicians aside to ask him if they were crazy. Why would they purposely introduce another point of contention into the system? Wouldn’t the benchmark processes all tend to serialize around their operations on this single table? Would they jam the benchmark by trying to read from this table as others were heavily modifying it? Why would they want to introduce all of these extra locks that they would need to manage? I had dozens of “Why would you even consider that?”–type questions. The technical folks from Oracle thought I was a little daft at that point. That is, until I pulled up a window into either Sybase SQL Server or Informix, and showed them the effects of two people inserting into a table, or someone trying to query a table with others inserting rows (the query returns zero rows per second). The differences between the way Oracle does it and the way almost every other database does it are phenomenal—they are night and day.

Needless to say, neither the Informix nor the SQL Server technicians were too keen on the database log table approach during their attempts. They preferred to record their timings to flat files in the operating system. The Oracle people left with a better understanding of exactly how to compete against Sybase SQL Server and Informix: just ask the audience “How many rows per second does your current database return when data is locked?” and take it from there.

The moral to this story is twofold. First, all databases are fundamentally different. Second, when designing an application for a new database platform, you must make no assumptions about how that database works. You must approach each new database as if you had never used a database before. Things you would do in one database are either not necessary or simply won’t work in another database.

In Oracle you will learn that:

· Transactions are what databases are all about. They are a good thing.

· You should defer committing until the correct moment. You should not do it quickly to avoid stressing the system, as it does not stress the system to have long or large transactions. The rule is commit when you must, and not before. Your transactions should only be as small or as large as your business logic dictates. (Interesting side note: I just wrote that rule for committing—“when you must, and not before”—on http://asktom.oracle.com just this morning, probably for the millionth time. Some things never change).

· You should hold locks on data as long as you need to. They are tools for you to use, not things to be avoided. Locks are not a scarce resource. Conversely, you should hold locks on data only as long as you need to. Locks may not be scarce, but they can prevent other sessions from modifying information.

· There is no overhead involved with row-level locking in Oracle—none. Whether you have 1 row lock or 1,000,000 row locks, the number of resources dedicated to locking this information will be the same. Sure, you’ll do a lot more work modifying 1,000,000 rows rather than 1 row, but the number of resources needed to lock 1,000,000 rows is the same as for 1 row; it is a fixed constant.

· You should never escalate a lock (e.g., use a table lock instead of row locks) because it would be “better for the system.” In Oracle, it won’t be better for the system—it will save no resources. There are times to use table locks, such as in a batch process, when you know you will update the entire table and you do not want other sessions to lock rows on you. But you are not using a table lock to make it easier for the system by avoiding having to allocate row locks; you are using a table lock to ensure you can gain access to all of the resources your batch program needs in this case.

· Concurrency and consistency can be achieved simultaneously. You can get it fast and correct, every time. Readers of data are not blocked by writers of data. Writers of data are not blocked by readers of data. This is one of the fundamental differences between Oracle and most other relational databases.

As we cover the remaining components in this chapter and the next, I’ll reinforce these points.

Locking Issues

Before we discuss the various types of locks that Oracle uses, it is useful to look at some locking issues, many of which arise from badly designed applications that do not make correct use (or make no use) of the database’s locking mechanisms.

Lost Updates

A lost update is a classic database problem. Actually, it is a problem in all multiuser computer environments. Simply put, a lost update occurs when the following events occur, in the order presented here:

1. A transaction in Session1 retrieves (queries) a row of data into local memory and displays it to an end user, User1.

2. Another transaction in Session2 retrieves that same row, but displays the data to a different end user, User2.

3. User1, using the application, modifies that row and has the application update the database and commit. Session1’s transaction is now complete.

4. User2 modifies that row also, and has the application update the database and commit. Session2’s transaction is now complete.

This process is referred to as a lost update because all of the changes made in Step 3 will be lost. Consider, for example, an employee update screen that allows a user to change an address, work number, and so on. The application itself is very simple: a small search screen to generate a list of employees and then the ability to drill down into the details of each employee. This should be a piece of cake. So, we write the application with no locking on our part, just simple SELECT and UPDATE commands.

Then an end user (User1) navigates to the details screen, changes an address on the screen, clicks Save, and receives confirmation that the update was successful. Fine, except that when User1 checks the record the next day to send out a tax form, the old address is still listed. How could that have happened? Unfortunately, it can happen all too easily. In this case, another end user (User2) queried the same record just after User1 did—after User1 read the data, but before User1 modified it. Then, after User2 queried the data, User1 performed her update, received confirmation, and even re-queried to see the change for herself. However, User2 then updated the work telephone number field and clicked Save, blissfully unaware of the fact that he just overwrote User1’s changes to the address field with the old data! The reason this can happen in this case is that the application developer wrote the program such that when one particular field is updated, all fields for that record are refreshed (simply because it’s easier to update all the columns instead of figuring out exactly which columns changed and only updating those).

Note that for this to happen, User1 and User2 didn’t even need to be working on the record at the exact same time. They simply needed to be working on the record at about the same time.

I’ve seen this database issue crop up time and again when GUI programmers with little or no database training are given the task of writing a database application. They get a working knowledge of SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE and set about writing the application. When the resulting application behaves in the manner just described, it completely destroys a user’s confidence in it, especially since it seems so random, so sporadic, and totally irreproducible in a controlled environment (leading the developer to believe it must be user error).

Many tools, such as Oracle Forms and APEX (Application Express, the tool we used to create the AskTom web site), transparently protect you from this behavior by ensuring the record is unchanged from the time you query it, and locked before you make any changes to it (known asoptimistic locking); but many others (such as a handwritten Visual Basic or a Java program) do not. What the tools that protect you do behind the scenes, or what the developers must do themselves, is use one of two types of locking strategies: pessimistic or optimistic.

Pessimistic Locking

The pessimistic locking method would be put into action the instant before a user modifies a value on the screen. For example, a row lock would be placed as soon as the user indicates his intention to perform an update on a specific row that he has selected and has visible on the screen (by clicking a button on the screen, say). That row lock would persist until the application applied the users’ modifications to the row in the database and committed.

Pessimistic locking is useful only in a stateful or connected environment—that is, one where your application has a continual connection to the database and you are the only one using that connection for at least the life of your transaction. This was the prevalent way of doing things in the early to mid 1990s with client/server applications. Every application would get a direct connection to the database to be used solely by that application instance. This method of connecting, in a stateful fashion, has become less common (though it is not extinct), especially with the advent of application servers in the mid to late 1990s.

Assuming you are using a stateful connection, you might have an application that queries the data without locking anything:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> select empno, ename, sal from emp where deptno = 10;

EMPNO ENAME SAL
---------- ---------- ----------
7782 CLARK 2450
7839 KING 5000
7934 MILLER 1300

Eventually, the user picks a row she would like to update. Let’s say in this case, she chooses to update the MILLER row. Our application will, at that point, (before the user makes any changes on the screen but after the row has been out of the database for a while) bind the values the user selected so we can query the database and make sure the data hasn’t been changed yet. In SQL*Plus, to simulate the bind calls the application would make, we can issue the following:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> variable empno number
SCOTT@ORA12CR1> variable ename varchar2(20)
SCOTT@ORA12CR1> variable sal number
SCOTT@ORA12CR1> exec :empno := 7934; :ename := 'MILLER'; :sal := 1300;
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

Now in addition to simply querying the values and verifying that they have not been changed, we are going to lock the row using FOR UPDATE NOWAIT. The application will execute the following query:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> select empno, ename, sal
2 from emp
3 where empno = :empno
4 and decode( ename, :ename, 1 ) = 1
5 and decode( sal, :sal, 1 ) = 1
6 for update nowait
7 /

EMPNO ENAME SAL
---------- ---------- ----------
7934 MILLER 1300

Note Why did we use "decode( column, :bind_variable, 1 ) = 1"? It is simply a shorthand way of expressing "where (column = :bind_variable OR (column is NULL and :bind_variable is NULL)". You could code either approach, thedecode() is just more compact in this case, and since NULL = NULL is never true (nor false!) in SQL, one of the two approaches would be necessary if either of the columns permitted NULLs.

The application supplies values for the bind variables from the data on the screen (in this case 7934, MILLER, and 1300) and re-queries this same row from the database, this time locking the row against updates by other sessions; hence this approach is called pessimistic locking. We lock the row before we attempt to update because we doubt—we are pessimistic—that the row will remain unchanged otherwise.

Since all tables should have a primary key (the preceding SELECT will retrieve at most one record since it includes the primary key, EMPNO) and primary keys should be immutable (we should never update them), we’ll get one of three outcomes from this statement:

· If the underlying data has not changed, we will get our MILLER row back, and this row will be locked from updates (but not reads) by others.

· If another user is in the process of modifying that row, we will get an ORA-00054 resource busy error. We must wait for the other user to finish with it.

· If, in the time between selecting the data and indicating our intention to update, someone has already changed the row, then we will get zero rows back. That implies the data on our screen is stale. To avoid the lost update scenario previously described, the application needs to re-query and lock the data before allowing the end user to modify it. With pessimistic locking in place, when User2 attempts to update the telephone field, the application would now recognize that the address field had been changed and would re-query the data. Thus, User2 would not overwrite User1’s change with the old data in that field.

Once we have locked the row successfully, the application will bind the new values, issue the update, and commit the changes:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> update emp
2 set ename = :ename, sal = :sal
3 where empno = :empno;

1 row updated.

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> commit;
Commit complete.

We have now very safely changed that row. It is not possible for us to overwrite someone else’s changes, as we verified the data did not change between when we initially read it out and when we locked it—our verification made sure no one else changed it before we did, and our lock ensures no one else can change it while we are working with it.

Optimistic Locking

The second method, referred to as optimistic locking, defers all locking up to the point right before the update is performed. In other words, we will modify the information on the screen without a lock being acquired. We are optimistic that the data will not be changed by some other user; hence we wait until the very last moment to find out if we are right.

This locking method works in all environments, but it does increase the probability that a user performing an update will lose. That is, when that user goes to update her row, she finds that the data has been modified, and she has to start over.

One popular implementation of optimistic locking is to keep the old and new values in the application, and upon updating the data, use an update like this:

Update table
Set column1 = :new_column1, column2 = :new_column2, ....
Where primary_key = :primary_key
And decode( column1, :old_column1, 1 ) = 1
And decode( column2, :old_column2, 1 ) = 1
...

Here, we are optimistic that the data doesn’t get changed. In this case, if our update updates one row, we got lucky; the data didn’t change between the time we read it and the time we got around to submitting the update. If we update zero rows, we lose; someone else changed the data and now we must figure out what we want to do to continue in the application. Should we make the end user re-key the transaction after querying the new values for the row (potentially causing the user frustration, as there is a chance the row will have changed yet again)? Should we try to merge the values of the two updates by performing update conflict-resolution based on business rules (lots of code)?

The preceding UPDATE will, in fact, avoid a lost update, but it does stand a chance of being blocked, hanging while it waits for an UPDATE of that row by another session to complete. If all of your applications use optimistic locking, then using a straight UPDATE is generally OK since rows are locked for a very short duration as updates are applied and committed. However, if some of your applications use pessimistic locking, which will hold locks on rows for relatively long periods of time, or if there is any application (such as a batch process) that might lock rows for a long period of time (more than a second or two is considered long), then you should consider using a SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT instead to verify the row was not changed, and lock it immediately prior to the UPDATE to avoid getting blocked by another session.

There are many methods of implementing optimistic concurrency control. We’ve discussed one whereby the application will store all of the before images of the row in the application itself. In the following sections, we’ll explore two others, namely:

· Using a special column that is maintained by a database trigger or application code to tell us the “version” of the record.

· Using a checksum or hash that was computed using the original data.

Optimistic Locking Using a Version Column

This is a simple implementation that involves adding a single column to each database table you wish to protect from lost updates. This column is generally either a NUMBER or DATE/TIMESTAMP column. It is typically maintained via a row trigger on the table, which is responsible for incrementing the NUMBER column or updating the DATE/TIMESTAMP column every time a row is modified.

Note I said it was typically maintained via a row trigger. I did not, however, say that was the best way or right way to maintain it. I would personally prefer this column be maintained by the UPDATE statement itself, not via a trigger because triggers that are not absolutely necessary (as this one is) should be avoided. For background on why I avoid triggers, refer to my “Trouble With Triggers” article from Oracle Magazine, found on the Oracle Technology Network at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2008/08-sep/o58asktom-101055.html.

The application you want to implement optimistic concurrency control would need only to save the value of this additional column, not all of the before images of the other columns. The application would only need to verify that the value of this column in the database at the point when the update is requested matches the value that was initially read out. If these values are the same, then the row has not been updated.

Let’s look at an implementation of optimistic locking using a copy of the SCOTT.DEPT table. We could use the following Data Definition Language (DDL) to create the table:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table dept
2 ( deptno number(2),
3 dname varchar2(14),
4 loc varchar2(13),
5 last_mod timestamp with time zone
6 default systimestamp
7 not null,
8 constraint dept_pk primary key(deptno)
9 )
10 /
Table created.

Then we INSERT a copy of the DEPT data into this table:

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into dept( deptno, dname, loc )
2 select deptno, dname, loc
3 from scott.dept;
4 rows created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> commit;
Commit complete.

That code re-creates the DEPT table, but with an additional LAST_MOD column that uses the TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type. We have defined this column to be NOT NULL so that it must be populated, and its default value is the current system time.

This TIMESTAMP data type has the highest precision available in Oracle, typically going down to the microsecond (millionth of a second). For an application that involves user think time, this level of precision on the TIMESTAMP is more than sufficient, as it is highly unlikely that the process of the database retrieving a row and a human looking at it, modifying it, and issuing the update back to the database could take place within a fraction of a second. The odds of two people reading and modifying the same row in the same fraction of a second are very small indeed.

Next, we need a way of maintaining this value. We have two choices: either the application can maintain the LAST_MOD column by setting its value to SYSTIMESTAMP when it updates a record, or a trigger/stored procedure can maintain it. Having the application maintain LAST_MOD is definitely more performant than a trigger-based approach, since a trigger will add additional processing on top of that already done by Oracle. However, this does mean that you are relying on all of the applications to maintain LAST_MOD consistently in all places that they modify this table. So, if each application is responsible for maintaining this field, it needs to consistently verify that the LAST_MOD column was not changed and set the LAST_MOD column to the current SYSTIMESTAMP. For example, if an application queries the row where DEPTNO=10:

EODA@ORA12CR1> variable deptno number
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable dname varchar2(14)
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable loc varchar2(13)
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable last_mod varchar2(50)
EODA@ORA12CR1>
EODA@ORA12CR1> begin
2 :deptno := 10;
3 select dname, loc, to_char( last_mod, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR' )
4 into :dname,:loc,:last_mod
5 from dept
6 where deptno = :deptno;
7 end;
8 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

which we can see is currently

EODA@ORA12CR1> select :deptno dno, :dname dname, :loc loc, :last_mod lm
2 from dual;

DNO DNAME LOC LM
------- ------------ ---------- ----------------------------------------
10 ACCOUNTING NEW YORK 15-APR-2014 07.04.01.147094 PM -06:00

would use this next update statement to modify the information. The last line does the very important check to make sure the timestamp has not changed and uses the built-in function TO_TIMESTAMP_TZ (tz is short for time zone ) to convert the string we saved in from the SELECTstatement back into the proper data type. Additionally, line 3 of the UPDATE statement updates the LAST_MOD column to be the current time if the row is found to be updated:

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept
2 set dname = initcap(:dname),
3 last_mod = systimestamp
4 where deptno = :deptno
5 and last_mod = to_timestamp_tz(:last_mod, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR' );

1 row updated.

As you can see, one row was updated, the row of interest. We updated the row by primary key (DEPTNO) and verified that the LAST_MOD column had not been modified by any other session between the time we read it first and the time we did the update. If we were to try to update that same record again, using the same logic but without retrieving the new LAST_MOD value, we would observe the following:

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept
2 set dname = upper(:dname),
3 last_mod = systimestamp
4 where deptno = :deptno
5 and last_mod = to_timestamp_tz(:last_mod, 'DD-MON-YYYY HH.MI.SSXFF AM TZR' );

0 rows updated.

Notice how 0 rows updated is reported this time because the predicate on LAST_MOD was not satisfied. While DEPTNO 10 still exists, the value at the moment we wish to update no longer matches the timestamp value at the moment we queried the row. So, the application knows that the data has been changed in the database, based on the fact that no rows were modified—and it must now figure out what it wants to do about that.

You would not rely on each application to maintain this field for a number of reasons. For one, it adds code to an application, and it is code that must be repeated and correctly implemented anywhere this table is modified. In a large application, that could be in many places. Furthermore, every application developed in the future must also conform to these rules. There are many chances to miss a spot in the application code and thus not have this field properly used. So, if the application code itself isn’t responsible for maintaining this LAST_MOD field, then I believe that the application shouldn’t be responsible for checking this LAST_MOD field either (if it can do the check, it can certainly do the update). So, in this case, I suggest encapsulating the update logic in a stored procedure and not allowing the application to update the table directly at all. If it cannot be trusted to maintain the value in this field, then it cannot be trusted to check it properly either. So, the stored procedure would take as inputs the bind variables we used in the previous updates and do exactly the same update. Upon detecting that zero rows were updated, the stored procedure could raise an exception back to the client to let the client know the update had, in effect, failed.

An alternate implementation uses a trigger to maintain this LAST_MOD field, but for something as simple as this, my recommendation is to avoid the trigger and let the DML take care of it. Triggers introduce a measurable amount of overhead, and in this case they would be unnecessary. Furthermore, the trigger would not be able to confirm that the row has not been modified (it would only be able to supply the value for LAST_MOD, not check it during the update), hence the application has to be made painfully aware of this column and how to properly use it. So the trigger is not by itself sufficient.

Optimistic Locking Using a Checksum

This is very similar to the previous version column method, but it uses the base data itself to compute a “virtual” version column. I’ll quote the Oracle Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference manual (before showing how to use one of the supplied packages) to help explain the goal and concepts behind a checksum or hash function:

“A one-way hash function takes a variable-length input string, the data, and converts it to a fixed-length (generally smaller) output string called a hash value. The hash value serves as a unique identifier (like a fingerprint) of the input data. You can use the hash value to verify whether data has been changed or not.

Note that a one-way hash function is a hash function that isn’t easily reversible. It is easy to compute a hash value from the input data, but it is hard to generate data that hashes to a particular value.”

We can use these hashes or checksums in the same way that we used our version column. We simply compare the hash or checksum value we obtain when we read data out of the database with that we obtain before modifying the data. If someone modified the row’s values after we read it out, but before we updated it, then the hash or checksum will almost certainly be different.

There are many ways to compute a hash or checksum. I’ll list several of these and demonstrate one in this section. All of these methods are based on supplied database functionality.

· OWA_OPT_LOCK.CHECKSUM: This method is available on Oracle8i version 8.1.5 and up. There is a function that, given a string, returns a 16-bit checksum, and another function that, given a ROWID, will compute the 16-bit checksum of that row and lock it at the same time. Possibilities of collision are 1 in 65,536 strings (the highest chance of a false positive).

· DBMS_OBFUSCATION_TOOLKIT.MD5: This method is available in Oracle8i version 8.1.7 and up. It computes a 128-bit message digest. The odds of a collision are about 1 in 3.4028E+38 (very small).

· DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH: This method is available in Oracle 10g Release 1 and up. It is capable of computing a Secure Hash Algorithm 1 (SHA-1) or MD4/MD5 message digests. It is recommended that you use the SHA-1 algorithm.

· DBMS_SQLHASH.GETHASH: This method is available in Oracle 10g Release 2 and up. It supports hash algorithms of SHA-1, MD4, and MD5. As a SYSDBA privileged user, you must grant execute on this package to a user before they can access it. This package is documented in the Oracle Database Security Guide.

· STANDARD_HASH: This method is available in Oracle 12c Release 1 and up. This is a built-in SQL function that computes a hash value on an expression using standard hash algorithms such as SHA1 (default), SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, and MD5. The returned value is a RAW data type.

· ORA_HASH: This method is available in Oracle 10g Release 1 and up. This is a built-in SQL function that takes a VARCHAR2 value as input and (optionally) another pair of inputs that control the return value. The returned value is a number—by default a number between 0 and 4294967295.

Note An array of hash and checksum functions are available in many programming languages, so there may be others at your disposal outside the database. That said, if you use built-in database capabilities, you will have increased your portability (to new languages, new approaches) in the future.

The following example shows how you might use the ORA_HASH built-in function in Oracle 10g and above to compute these hashes/checksums. The technique would also be applicable for the other listed approaches; the logic would not be very much different, but the APIs you call would be. First, we’ll start by removing the column we used in the previous example:

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter table dept drop column last_mod;
Table altered.

And then have our application query and display the information for department 10. Note that while we query the information, we compute the hash using the ORA_HASH built-in. This is the version information that we retain in our application. Following is our code to query and display:

EODA@ORA12CR1> variable deptno number
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable dname varchar2(14)
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable loc varchar2(13)
EODA@ORA12CR1> variable hash number

EODA@ORA12CR1> begin
2 select deptno, dname, loc,
3 ora_hash( dname || '/' || loc ) hash
4 into :deptno, :dname, :loc, :hash
5 from dept
6 where deptno = 10;
7 end;
8 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select :deptno, :dname, :loc, :hash
2 from dual;

:DEPTNO :DNAME :LOC :HASH
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
10 Accounting NEW YORK 2721972020

As you can see, the hash is just some number. It is the value we would want to use before updating. To update that row, we would lock the row in the database as it exists right now, and then compare the hash value of that row with the hash value we computed when we read the data out of the database. The logic for doing so could look like the following:

EODA@ORA12CR1> exec :dname := lower(:dname);
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept
2 set dname = :dname
3 where deptno = :deptno
4 and ora_hash( dname || '/' || loc ) = :hash
5 /
1 row updated.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select dept.*,
2 ora_hash( dname || '/' || loc ) hash
3 from dept
4 where deptno = :deptno;

DEPTNO DNAME LOC HASH
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
10 accounting NEW YORK 2818855829

Upon re-querying the data and computing the hash again after the update, we can see that the hash value is different. If someone had modified the row before we did, our hash values would not have compared. We can see this by attempting our update again, using the old hash value we read out the first time:

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept
2 set dname = :dname
3 where deptno = :deptno
4 and ora_hash( dname || '/' || loc ) = :hash
5 /

0 rows updated.

As you see, there were zero rows updated, since our hash value did not match the data currently in the database.

In order for this hash-based approach to work properly, we must ensure every application uses the same approach when computing the hash, specifically they must concatenate dname with ‘/’ with loc – in that order. To make that approach universal, I would suggest adding a virtual column to the table (in Oracle 11g Release 1 and above) or using a view to add a column, so that the function is hidden from the application itself. Adding a column would look like this in Oracle 11g Release 1 and above:

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter table dept
2 add hash as
3 ( ora_hash(dname || '/' || loc ) );
Table altered.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select *
2 from dept
3 where deptno = :deptno;

DEPTNO DNAME LOC HASH
---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
10 accounting NEW YORK 2818855829

The added column is a virtual column and as such incurs no storage overhead. The value is not computed and stored on disk. Rather, it is computed upon retrieval of the data from the database.

This example showed how to implement optimistic locking with a hash or checksum. You should bear in mind that computing a hash or checksum is a somewhat CPU-intensive operation; it is computationally expensive. On a system where CPU bandwidth is a scarce resource, you must take this fact into consideration. However, this approach is much more network-friendly because the transmission of a relatively small hash instead of a before-and-after image of the row (to compare column by column) over the network will consume much less of that resource.

Optimistic or Pessimistic Locking?

So which method is best? In my experience, pessimistic locking works very well in Oracle (but perhaps not so well in other databases) and has many advantages over optimistic locking. However, it requires a stateful connection to the database, like a client/server connection. This is because locks are not held across connections. This single fact makes pessimistic locking unrealistic in many cases today. In the past, with client/server applications and a couple dozen or hundred users, it would have been my first and only choice. Today, however, optimistic concurrency control is what I would recommend for most applications. Having a connection for the entire duration of a transaction is just too high a price to pay.

Of the methods available, which do I use? I tend to use the version column approach with a timestamp column. It gives me the extra update information in a long-term sense. Furthermore, it’s less computationally expensive than a hash or checksum, and it doesn’t run into the issues potentially encountered with a hash or checksum when processing LONG, LONG RAW, CLOB, BLOB, and other very large columns (LONG and LONG RAW are obsolete, I only mention them here because they’re still used frequently in the Oracle data dictionary).

If I had to add optimistic concurrency controls to a table that was still being used with a pessimistic locking scheme (e.g., the table was accessed in both client/server applications and over the Web), I would opt for the ORA_HASH approach. The reason is that the existing legacy application might not appreciate a new column appearing. Even if we took the additional step of hiding the extra column, the application might suffer from the overhead of the necessary trigger. The ORA_HASH technique would be nonintrusive and lightweight in that respect. The hashing/checksum approach can be very database independent, especially if we compute the hashes or checksums outside of the database. However, by performing the computations in the middle tier rather than the database, we will incur higher resource usage penalties in terms of CPU usage and network transfers.

Blocking

Blocking occurs when one session holds a lock on a resource that another session is requesting. As a result, the requesting session will be blocked—it will hang until the holding session gives up the locked resource. In almost every case, blocking is avoidable. In fact, if you do find that your session is blocked in an interactive application, then you have probably been suffering from the lost update bug as well, perhaps without realizing it. That is, your application logic is flawed and that is the cause of the blocking.

The five common DML statements that will block in the database are INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE, and SELECT FOR UPDATE. The solution to a blocked SELECT FOR UPDATE is trivial: simply add the NOWAIT clause and it will no longer block. Instead, your application will report a message back to the end user that the row is already locked. The interesting cases are the remaining four DML statements. We’ll look at each of them and see why they should not block and how to correct the situation if they do.

Blocked Inserts

There are few times when an INSERT will block. The most common scenario is when you have a table with a primary key or unique constraint placed on it and two sessions attempt to insert a row with the same value. One of the sessions will block until the other session either commits (in which case the blocked session will receive an error about a duplicate value) or rolls back (in which case the blocked session succeeds). Another case involves tables linked together via referential integrity constraints. An INSERT into a child table may become blocked if the parent row it depends on is being created or deleted.

Blocked INSERTs typically happen with applications that allow the end user to generate the primary key/unique column value. This situation is most easily avoided by using a sequence or the SYS_GUID() built-in function to generate the primary key/unique column value. Sequences/SYS_GUID() were designed to be highly concurrent methods of generating unique keys in a multiuser environment. In the event that you cannot use either and must allow the end user to generate a key that might be duplicated, you can use the following technique, which avoids the issue by using manual locks implemented via the built-in DBMS_LOCK package.

Note The following example demonstrates how to prevent a session from blocking on an insert statement due to a primary key or unique constraint. It should be stressed that the fix demonstrated here should be considered a short-term solution while the application architecture itself is inspected. This approach adds obvious overhead and should not be implemented lightly. A well-designed application would not encounter this issue (for example, you wouldn’t have transactions that last for hours in a concurrent environment). This should be considered a last resort and is definitely not something you want to do to every table in your application “just in case.”

With inserts, there’s no existing row to select and lock; there’s no way to prevent others from inserting a row with the same value, thus blocking our session and causing an indefinite wait. Here is where DBMS_LOCK comes into play. To demonstrate this technique, we will create a table with a primary key and a trigger that will prevent two (or more) sessions from inserting the same values simultaneously. The trigger will use DBMS_UTILITY.GET_HASH_VALUE to hash the primary key into some number between 0 and 1,073,741,823 (the range of lock ID numbers permitted for our use by Oracle). In this example, I’ve chosen a hash table of size 1,024, meaning we will hash our primary keys into one of 1,024 different lock IDs. Then we will use DBMS_LOCK.REQUEST to allocate an exclusive lock based on that ID. Only one session at a time will be able to do that, so if someone else tries to insert a record into our table with the same primary key, that person’s lock request will fail (and the error resource busy will be raised):

Note To successfully compile this trigger, execute permission on DBMS_LOCK must be granted directly to your schema. The privilege to execute DBMS_LOCK may not come from a role.

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> create table demo ( x int primary key );
Table created.

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> create or replace trigger demo_bifer
2 before insert on demo
3 for each row
4 declare
5 l_lock_id number;
6 resource_busy exception;
7 pragma exception_init( resource_busy, -54 );
8 begin
9 l_lock_id :=
10 dbms_utility.get_hash_value( to_char( :new.x ), 0, 1024 );
11 if ( dbms_lock.request
12 ( id => l_lock_id,
13 lockmode => dbms_lock.x_mode,
14 timeout => 0,
15 release_on_commit => TRUE ) not in (0,4) )
16 then
17 raise resource_busy;
18 end if;
19 end;
20 /
Trigger created.

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> insert into demo(x) values (1);
1 row created.

Now, to demonstrate us catching this blocking INSERT problem in a single session, we’ll use an AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION so that it seems as if this next block of code was executed in another SQL*Plus session. In fact, if you use another session, the behavior will be the same. Here we go:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> declare
2 pragma autonomous_transaction;
3 begin
4 insert into demo(x) values (1);
5 commit;
6 end;
7 /
declare
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified or timeout expired
ORA-06512: at "SCOTT.DEMO_BIFER", line 14
ORA-04088: error during execution of trigger 'SCOTT.DEMO_BIFER'
ORA-06512: at line 4

The concept here is to take the supplied primary key value of the table protected by the trigger and put it in a character string. We can then use DBMS_UTILITY.GET_HASH_VALUE to come up with a mostly unique hash value for the string. As long as we use a hash table smaller than 1,073,741,823, we can lock that value exclusively using DBMS_LOCK.

After hashing, we take that value and use DBMS_LOCK to request that lock ID to be exclusively locked with a timeout of ZERO (this returns immediately if someone else has locked that value). If we timeout or fail for any reason, we raise ORA-54 Resource Busy. Otherwise, we do nothing—it is OK to insert, we won’t block. Upon committing our transaction, all locks, including those allocated by this DBMS_LOCK call, will be released.

Of course, if the primary key of your table is an INTEGER and you don’t expect the key to go over 1 billion, you can skip the hash and just use the number as the lock ID.

You’ll need to play with the size of the hash table (1,024 in this example) to avoid artificial resource busy messages due to different strings hashing to the same number. The size of the hash table will be application (data)-specific, and it will be influenced by the number of concurrent insertions as well. You might also add a flag to the trigger to allow people to turn the check on and off. If I were going to insert hundreds or thousands of records, for example, I might not want this check enabled.

Blocked Merges, Updates, and Deletes

In an interactive application—one where you query some data out of the database, allow an end user to manipulate it, and then put it back into the database—a blocked UPDATE or DELETE indicates that you probably have a lost update problem in your code. (I’ll call it a bug in your code if you do.) You are attempting to UPDATE a row that someone else is already updating (in other words, one that someone else already has locked). You can avoid the blocking issue by using the SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT query to

· Verify the data has not changed since you queried it out (preventing lost updates).

· Lock the row (preventing the UPDATE or DELETE from blocking).

As discussed earlier, you can do this regardless of the locking approach you take. Both pessimistic and optimistic locking may employ the SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT query to verify the row has not changed. Pessimistic locking would use that SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAITstatement the instant the user indicated her intention to modify the data. Optimistic locking would use that statement immediately prior to updating the data in the database. Not only will this resolve the blocking issue in your application, but it’ll also correct the data integrity issue.

Since a MERGE is simply an INSERT and UPDATE (and in 10g and above, with the enhanced MERGE syntax, it’s a DELETE as well), you would use both techniques simultaneously.

Deadlocks

Deadlocks occur when you have two sessions, each of which is holding a resource that the other wants. For example, if I have two tables, A and B, in my database, and each has a single row in it, I can demonstrate a deadlock easily. All I need to do is open two sessions (e.g., two SQL*Plus sessions). In session A, I update table A. In session B, I update table B. Now, if I attempt to update table A in session B, I will become blocked. Session A has this row locked already. This is not a deadlock; it is just blocking. I have not yet deadlocked because there is a chance that session Awill commit or roll back, and session B will simply continue at that point.

If I go back to session A and then try to update table B, I will cause a deadlock. One of the two sessions will be chosen as a victim and will have its statement rolled back. For example, the attempt by session B to update table A may be rolled back, with an error such as the following:

update a set x = x+1
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00060: deadlock detected while waiting for resource

Session A’s attempt to update table B will remain blocked—Oracle will not roll back the entire transaction. Only one of the statements that contributed to the deadlock is rolled back. Session B still has the row in table B locked, and session A is patiently waiting for the row to become available. After receiving the deadlock message, session B must decide whether to commit the outstanding work on table B, roll it back, or continue down an alternate path and commit later. As soon as this session does commit or roll back, the other blocked session will continue on as if nothing happened.

Oracle considers deadlocks to be so rare and unusual that it creates a trace file on the server each time one does occur. The contents of the trace file will look something like this:

*** 2014-04-16 18:58:26.602
*** SESSION ID:(31.18321) 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
*** CLIENT ID:() 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
*** SERVICE NAME:(SYS$USERS) 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
*** MODULE NAME:(SQL*Plus) 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
*** ACTION NAME:() 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
*** 2014-04-16 18:58:26.603
DEADLOCK DETECTED ( ORA-00060 )

[Transaction Deadlock]

The following deadlock is not an ORACLE error. It is a
deadlock due to user error in the design of an application
or from issuing incorrect ad-hoc SQL. The following
information may aid in determining the deadlock:

Obviously, Oracle considers these application deadlocks a self-induced error on the part of the application and, for the most part, Oracle is correct. Unlike in many other RDBMSs, deadlocks are so rare in Oracle they can be considered almost nonexistent. Typically, you must come up with artificial conditions to get one.

The number one cause of deadlocks in the Oracle database, in my experience, is unindexed foreign keys. (The number two cause is bitmap indexes on tables subject to concurrent updates, which we’ll cover in Chapter 11). Oracle will place a full table lock on a child table after modification of the parent table in three scenarios:

· If you update the parent table’s primary key (a very rare occurrence if you follow the rule of relational databases stating that primary keys should be immutable), the child table will be locked in the absence of an index on the foreign key.

· If you delete a parent table row, the entire child table will be locked (in the absence of an index on the foreign key) as well.

· If you merge into the parent table, the entire child table will be locked (in the absence of an index on the foreign key) as well. Note this is only true in Oracle9i and 10g and is no longer true in Oracle 11g Release 1 and above.

These full table locks are a short-term occurrence in Oracle9i and above, meaning they need to be taken for the duration of the DML operation, not the entire transaction. Even so, they can and do cause large locking issues. As a demonstration of the first point, if we have a pair of tables set up as follows, nothing untoward happens yet:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table p ( x int primary key );
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table c ( x references p );
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into p values ( 1 );
1 row created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into p values ( 2 );
1 row created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> commit;
Commit complete.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into c values ( 2 );
1 row created.

But if we go into another session and attempt to delete the first parent record, we’ll find that session gets immediately blocked.

EODA@ORA12CR1> delete from p where x = 1;

It is attempting to gain a full table lock on table C before it does the delete. Now no other session can initiate a DELETE, INSERT, or UPDATE of any rows in C (the sessions that had already started may continue, but no new sessions may start to modify C).

This blocking would happen with an update of the primary key value as well. Because updating a primary key is a huge no-no in a relational database, this is generally not an issue with updates. However, I have seen this updating of the primary key become a serious issue when developers use tools that generate SQL for them, and those tools update every single column, regardless of whether the end user actually modified that column or not. For example, say that we use Oracle Forms and create a default layout on any table. Oracle Forms by default will generate an update that modifies every single column in the table we choose to display. If we build a default layout on the DEPT table and include all three fields, Oracle Forms will execute the following command whenever we modify any of the columns of the DEPT table:

update dept set deptno=:1,dname=:2,loc=:3 where rowid=:4

In this case, if the EMP table has a foreign key to DEPT and there is no index on the DEPTNO column in the EMP table, then the entire EMP table will be locked during an update to DEPT. This is something to watch out for carefully if you are using any tools that generate SQL for you. Even though the value of the primary key does not change, the child table EMP will be locked after the execution of the preceding SQL statement. In the case of Oracle Forms, the solution is to set that table’s UPDATE CHANGED COLUMNS ONLY property to YES. Oracle Forms will generate an UPDATE statement that includes only the changed columns (not the primary key).

Problems arising from deletion of a row in a parent table are far more common. As I demonstrated, if I delete a row in table P, then the child table, C, will become locked during the DML operation, thus preventing other updates against C from taking place for the duration of the transaction (assuming no one else was modifying C, of course; in which case the delete will wait). This is where the blocking and deadlock issues come in. By locking the entire table C, I have seriously decreased the concurrency in my database to the point where no one will be able to modify anything in C. In addition, I have increased the probability of a deadlock, since I now own lots of data until I commit. The probability that some other session will become blocked on C is now much higher; any session that tries to modify C will get blocked. Therefore, I’ll start seeing lots of sessions that hold some preexisting locks on other resources getting blocked in the database. If any of these blocked sessions are, in fact, locking a resource that my session also needs, we will have a deadlock. The deadlock in this case is caused by my session preventing access to many more resources (in this case, all of the rows in a single table) than it ever needed. When someone complains of deadlocks in the database, I have them run a script that finds unindexed foreign keys; 99 percent of the time we locate an offending table. By simply indexing that foreign key, the deadlocks—and lots of other contention issues—go away. The following example demonstrates the use of this script to locate the unindexed foreign key in table C:

EODA@ORA12CR1> column columns format a30 word_wrapped
EODA@ORA12CR1> column table_name format a15 word_wrapped
EODA@ORA12CR1> column constraint_name format a15 word_wrapped

EODA@ORA12CR1> select table_name, constraint_name,
2 cname1 || nvl2(cname2,','||cname2,null) ||
3 nvl2(cname3,','||cname3,null) || nvl2(cname4,','||cname4,null) ||
4 nvl2(cname5,','||cname5,null) || nvl2(cname6,','||cname6,null) ||
5 nvl2(cname7,','||cname7,null) || nvl2(cname8,','||cname8,null)
6 columns
7 from ( select b.table_name,
8 b.constraint_name,
9 max(decode( position, 1, column_name, null )) cname1,
10 max(decode( position, 2, column_name, null )) cname2,
11 max(decode( position, 3, column_name, null )) cname3,
12 max(decode( position, 4, column_name, null )) cname4,
13 max(decode( position, 5, column_name, null )) cname5,
14 max(decode( position, 6, column_name, null )) cname6,
15 max(decode( position, 7, column_name, null )) cname7,
16 max(decode( position, 8, column_name, null )) cname8,
17 count(*) col_cnt
18 from (select substr(table_name,1,30) table_name,
19 substr(constraint_name,1,30) constraint_name,
20 substr(column_name,1,30) column_name,
21 position
22 from user_cons_columns ) a,
23 user_constraints b
24 where a.constraint_name = b.constraint_name
25 and b.constraint_type = 'R'
26 group by b.table_name, b.constraint_name
27 ) cons
28 where col_cnt > ALL
29 ( select count(*)
30 from user_ind_columns i,
31 user_indexes ui
32 where i.table_name = cons.table_name
33 and i.column_name in (cname1, cname2, cname3, cname4,
34 cname5, cname6, cname7, cname8 )
35 and i.column_position <= cons.col_cnt
36 and ui.table_name = i.table_name
37 and ui.index_name = i.index_name
38 and ui.index_type IN ('NORMAL','NORMAL/REV')
39 group by i.index_name
40 )
41 /

TABLE_NAME CONSTRAINT_NAME COLUMNS
--------------- --------------- ------------------------------
C SYS_C0061427 X

This script works on foreign key constraints that have up to eight columns in them (if you have more than that, you probably want to rethink your design). It starts by building an inline view named CONS in the previous query. This inline view transposes the appropriate column names in the constraint from rows into columns, with the result being a row per constraint and up to eight columns that have the names of the columns in the constraint. Additionally, there is a column, COL_CNT, which contains the number of columns in the foreign key constraint itself. For each row returned from the inline view, we execute a correlated subquery that checks all of the indexes on the table currently being processed. It counts the columns in that index that match columns in the foreign key constraint and then groups them by index name. So, it generates a set of numbers, each of which is a count of matching columns in some index on that table. If the original COL_CNT is greater than all of these numbers, then there is no index on that table that supports that constraint. If COL_CNT is less than all of these numbers, then there is at least one index that supports that constraint. Note the use of the NVL2 function, which we used to “glue” the list of column names into a comma-separated list. This function takes three arguments: A, B, C. If argument A is not null, then it returns argument B; otherwise, it returns argument C. This query assumes that the owner of the constraint is the owner of the table and index as well. If another user indexed the table or the table is in another schema (both rare events), it will not work correctly.

The prior script also checks to see if the index type is a B*Tree index (NORMAL or NORMAL/REV). We’re checking to see if it’s a B*Tree index because a bitmap index on a foreign key column does not prevent the locking issue.

Note In data warehouse environments, it’s common to create bitmap indexes on a fact table’s foreign key columns. However, in data warehouse environments, usually the loading of data is done in an orderly manner through scheduled ETL processes and, therefore, would not encounter the situation of inserting into a child table as one process while concurrently deleting from a parent table from another process (like you might encounter in an OLTP application).

So, the prior script shows that table C has a foreign key on the column X but no index. By creating a B*Tree index on X, we can remove this locking issue all together. In addition to this table lock, an unindexed foreign key can also be problematic in the following cases:

· When you have an ON DELETE CASCADE and have not indexed the child table. For example, EMP is child of DEPT. DELETE DEPTNO = 10 should CASCADE to EMP. If DEPTNO in EMP is not indexed, you will get a full table scan of EMP for each row deleted from the DEPT table. This full scan is probably undesirable, and if you delete many rows from the parent table, the child table will be scanned once for each parent row deleted.

· When you query from the parent to the child. Consider the EMP/DEPT example again. It is very common to query the EMP table in the context of a DEPTNO. If you frequently run the following query (say, to generate a report), you’ll find that not having the index in place will slow down the queries:

select * from dept, emp
where emp.deptno = dept.deptno and dept.deptno = :X;

When do you not need to index a foreign key? The answer is, in general, when the following conditions are met:

· You do not delete from the parent table.

· You do not update the parent table’s unique/primary key value (watch for unintended updates to the primary key by tools).

· You do not join from the parent to the child (like DEPT to EMP).

If you satisfy all three conditions, feel free to skip the index; it’s not needed. If you meet any of the preceding conditions, be aware of the consequences. This is the one rare instance when Oracle tends to overlock data.

Lock Escalation

When lock escalation occurs, the system is decreasing the granularity of your locks. An example would be the database system turning your 100 row-level locks against a table into a single table-level lock. You are now using one lock to lock everything and, typically, you are also locking a whole lot more data than you were before. Lock escalation is used frequently in databases that consider a lock to be a scarce resource and overhead to be avoided.

Note Oracle will never escalate a lock. Never.

Oracle never escalates locks, but it does practice lock conversion or lock promotion, terms that are often confused with lock escalation.

Note The terms lock conversion and lock promotion are synonymous. Oracle typically refers to the process as lock conversion.

Oracle will take a lock at the lowest level possible (i.e., the least restrictive lock possible) and convert that lock to a more restrictive level if necessary. For example, if you select a row from a table with the FOR UPDATE clause, two locks will be created. One lock is placed on the row(s) you selected (and this will be an exclusive lock; no one else can lock that specific row in exclusive mode). The other lock, a ROW SHARE TABLE lock, is placed on the table itself. This will prevent other sessions from placing an exclusive lock on the table and thus prevent them from altering the structure of the table, for example. Another session can modify any other row in this table without conflict. As many commands as possible that could execute successfully given there is a locked row in the table will be permitted.

Lock escalation is not a database “feature.” It is not a desired attribute. The fact that a database supports lock escalation implies there is some inherent overhead in its locking mechanism and significant work is performed to manage hundreds of locks. In Oracle, the overhead to have 1 lock or 1 million locks is the same: none.

Lock Types

The three general classes of locks in Oracle are as follows:

· DML locks: DML stands for Data Manipulation Language. In general this means SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, MERGE, and DELETE statements. DML locks are the mechanism that allows for concurrent data modifications. DML locks will be, for example, locks on a specific row of data or a lock at the table level that locks every row in the table.

· DDL locks: DDL stands for Data Definition Language, (CREATE and ALTER statements, and so on). DDL locks protect the definition of the structure of objects.

· Internal locks and latches: Oracle uses these locks to protect its internal data structures. For example, when Oracle parses a query and generates an optimized query plan, it will latch the library cache to put that plan in there for other sessions to use. A latch is a lightweight, low-level serialization device employed by Oracle, similar in function to a lock. Do not confuse or be misled by the term lightweight; latches are a common cause of contention in the database, as you will see. They are lightweight in their implementation, but not their effect.

We will now take a more detailed look at the specific types of locks within each of these general classes and the implications of their use. There are more lock types than I can cover here. The ones I cover in the sections that follow are the most common and are held for a long duration. The other types of locks are generally held for very short periods of time.

DML Locks

DML locks are used to ensure that only one person at a time modifies a row and that no one can drop a table upon which you are working. Oracle will place these locks for you, more or less transparently, as you do work.

TX (Transaction) Locks

A TX lock is acquired when a transaction initiates its first change. The transaction is automatically initiated at this point (you don’t explicitly start a transaction in Oracle). The lock is held until the transaction performs a COMMIT or ROLLBACK. It is used as a queuing mechanism so that other sessions can wait for the transaction to complete. Each and every row you modify or SELECT FOR UPDATE in a transaction will point to an associated TX lock for that transaction. While this sounds expensive, it is not. To understand why this is, you need a conceptual understanding of where locks live and how they are managed. In Oracle, locks are stored as an attribute of the data (see Chapter 10 for an overview of the Oracle block format). Oracle does not have a traditional lock manager that keeps a long list of every row that is locked in the system. Many other databases do it that way because, for them, locks are a scarce resource, the use of which needs to be monitored. The more locks are in use, the more these systems have to manage, so it is a concern in these systems if too many locks are being used.

In a database with a traditional memory-based lock manager, the process of locking a row would resemble the following:

1. Find the address of the row you want to lock.

2. Get in line at the lock manager (which must be serialized, as it is a common in-memory structure).

3. Lock the list.

4. Search through the list to see if anyone else has locked this row.

5. Create a new entry in the list to establish the fact that you have locked the row.

6. Unlock the list.

Now that you have the row locked, you can modify it. Later, as you commit your changes, you must continue the procedure as follows:

1. Get in line again.

2. Lock the list of locks.

3. Search through the list and release all of your locks.

4. Unlock the list.

As you can see, the more locks acquired, the more time spent on this operation, both before and after modifying the data. Oracle does not do it that way. Oracle’s process looks like this:

1. Find the address of the row you want to lock.

2. Go to the row.

3. Lock the row right there, right then—at the location of the row, not in a big list somewhere (waiting for the transaction that has it locked to end if it is already locked, unless you are using the NOWAIT option).

That’s it. Since the lock is stored as an attribute of the data, Oracle does not need a traditional lock manager. The transaction will simply go to the data and lock it (if it is not locked already). The interesting thing is that the data may appear locked when you get to it, even if it’s not. When you lock rows of data in Oracle, the row points to a copy of the transaction ID that is stored with the block containing the data, and when the lock is released that transaction ID is left behind. This transaction ID is unique to your transaction and represents the undo segment number, slot, and sequence number. You leave that on the block that contains your row to tell other sessions that you own this data (not all of the data on the block—just the one row you are modifying). When another session comes along, it sees the transaction ID and, using the fact that it represents a transaction, it can quickly see if the transaction holding the lock is still active. If the lock is not active, the session is allowed access to the data. If the lock is still active, that session will ask to be notified as soon as the lock is released. Hence, you have a queuing mechanism: the session requesting the lock will be queued up waiting for that transaction to complete, and then it will get the data.

Here is a small example showing how this happens, using three V$ tables:

· V$TRANSACTION, which contains an entry for every active transaction.

· V$SESSION, which shows the sessions logged in.

· V$LOCK, which contains an entry for all enqueue locks being held as well as for sessions that are waiting on locks. You will not see a row in this view for each row locked by a session. As stated earlier, that master list of locks at the row level doesn’t exist. If a session has one row in the EMP table locked, there will be one row in this view for that session indicating that fact. If a session has millions of rows in the EMP table locked, there will still be just one row in this view. This view shows what enqueue locks individual sessions have.

First, let’s get a copy of the EMP and DEPT tables. If you already have them in your schema, replace them with the following definitions:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table dept
2 as select * from scott.dept;
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table emp
2 as select * from scott.emp;
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter table dept
2 add constraint dept_pk
3 primary key(deptno);
Table altered.

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter table emp
2 add constraint emp_pk
3 primary key(empno);
Table altered.

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter table emp
2 add constraint emp_fk_dept
3 foreign key (deptno)
4 references dept(deptno);
Table altered.

EODA@ORA12CR1> create index emp_deptno_idx
2 on emp(deptno);
Index created.

Let’s start a transaction now:

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept
2 set dname = initcap(dname);
4 rows updated.

Now, let’s look at the state of the system at this point. This example assumes a single-user system; otherwise, you may see many rows in V$TRANSACTION. Even in a single-user system, do not be surprised to see more than one row in V$TRANSACTION, as many of the background Oracle processes may be performing a transaction as well.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select username,
2 v$lock.sid,
3 trunc(id1/power(2,16)) rbs,
4 bitand(id1,to_number('ffff','xxxx'))+0 slot,
5 id2 seq,
6 lmode,
7 request
8 from v$lock, v$session
9 where v$lock.type = 'TX'
10 and v$lock.sid = v$session.sid
11 and v$session.username = USER;

USERNAME SID RBS SLOT SEQ LMODE REQUEST
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
EODA 22 2 27 21201 6 0

EODA@ORA12CR1> select XIDUSN, XIDSLOT, XIDSQN from v$transaction;

XIDUSN XIDSLOT XIDSQN
---------- ---------- ----------
2 27 21201

The interesting points to note here are as follows:

· The LMODE is 6 in the V$LOCK table and the REQUEST is 0. If you refer to the definition of the V$LOCK table in the Oracle Database Reference manual, you will find that LMODE=6 is an exclusive lock. A value of 0 in the request means you are not making a request; you have the lock.

· There is only one row in this table. This V$LOCK table is more of a queuing table than a lock table. Many people expect four rows in V$LOCK since we have four rows locked. Remember, however, that Oracle does not store a master list of every row locked anywhere. To find out if a row is locked, we must go to that row.

· I took the ID1 and ID2 columns and performed some manipulation on them. Oracle needed to save three 16-bit numbers, but only had two columns in order to do it. So, the first column ID1 holds two of these numbers. By dividing by 2^16 withtrunc(id1/power(2,16)) rbs, and by masking out the high bits with bitand(id1,to_number('ffff','xxxx'))+0 slot, I am able to get back the two numbers that are hiding in that one number.

· The RBS, SLOT, and SEQ values match the V$TRANSACTION information. This is my transaction ID.

Now we’ll start another session using the same username, update some rows in EMP, and then try to update DEPT:

EODA@ORA12CR1> update emp set ename = upper(ename);
14 rows updated.

EODA@ORA12CR1> update dept set deptno = deptno-10;

We’re now blocked in this session. If we run the V$ queries again, we see the following:

EODA@ORA12CR1> select username,
2 v$lock.sid,
3 trunc(id1/power(2,16)) rbs,
4 bitand(id1,to_number('ffff','xxxx'))+0 slot,
5 id2 seq,
6 lmode,
7 request
8 from v$lock, v$session
9 where v$lock.type = 'TX'
10 and v$lock.sid = v$session.sid
11 and v$session.username = USER;

USERNAME SID RBS SLOT SEQ LMODE REQUEST
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
EODA 17 2 27 21201 0 6
EODA 22 2 27 21201 6 0
EODA 17 8 17 21403 6 0

EODA@ORA12CR1> select XIDUSN, XIDSLOT, XIDSQN from v$transaction;

XIDUSN XIDSLOT XIDSQN
---------- ---------- ----------
2 27 21201
8 17 21403

What we see here is that a new transaction has begun, with a transaction ID of (8,17,21403). Our new session, SID=17, has two rows in V$LOCK this time. One row represents the locks that it owns (where LMODE=6). It also has a row that shows a REQUEST with a value of 6. This is a request for an exclusive lock. The interesting thing to note here is that the RBS/SLOT/SEQ values of this request row are the transaction ID of the holder of the lock. The transaction with SID=22 is blocking the transaction with SID=17. We can see this more explicitly simply by doing a self-join of V$LOCK:

EODA@ORA12CR1> select
2 (select username from v$session where sid=a.sid) blocker,
3 a.sid,
4 ' is blocking ',
5 (select username from v$session where sid=b.sid) blockee,
6 b.sid
7 from v$lock a, v$lock b
8 where a.block = 1
9 and b.request > 0
10 and a.id1 = b.id1
11 and a.id2 = b.id2;

BLOCKER SID 'ISBLOCKING' BLOCKEE SID
--------------- ---------- ------------- --------------- ----------
EODA 22 is blocking EODA 17

Now, if we commit our original transaction, SID=22, and rerun our lock query, we find that the request row has gone:

EODA@ORA12CR1> select username,
2 v$lock.sid,
3 trunc(id1/power(2,16)) rbs,
4 bitand(id1,to_number('ffff','xxxx'))+0 slot,
5 id2 seq,
6 lmode,
7 request
8 from v$lock, v$session
9 where v$lock.type = 'TX'
10 and v$lock.sid = v$session.sid
11 and v$session.username = USER;

USERNAME SID RBS SLOT SEQ LMODE REQUEST
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
EODA 17 8 17 21403 6 0

EODA@ORA12CR1> select XIDUSN, XIDSLOT, XIDSQN from v$transaction;

XIDUSN XIDSLOT XIDSQN
---------- ---------- ----------
8 17 21403

The request row disappeared the instant the other session gave up its lock. That request row was the queuing mechanism. The database is able to wake up the blocked sessions the instant the transaction is completed. There are prettier displays with various GUI tools, but in a pinch, having knowledge of the tables you need to look at is very useful.

However, before we can say that we have a good understanding of how the row locking in Oracle works, we must look at one last topic: how the locking and transaction information is managed with the data itself. It is part of the block overhead. In Chapter 10, we’ll get into the details of the block format, but suffice it to say that at the top of a database block is some leading overhead space in which to store a transaction table for that block. This transaction table contains an entry for each real transaction that has locked some data in that block. The size of this structure is controlled by two physical attribute parameters on the CREATE statement for an object:

· INITRANS: The initial, preallocated size of this structure. This defaults to 2 for indexes and tables.

· MAXTRANS: The maximum size to which this structure may grow. It defaults to 255 and has a minimum of 2 practically. In Oracle 10g and above, this setting has been deprecated, so it no longer applies. MAXTRANS is always 255 in that release and later.

Each block starts life with, by default, two transaction slots. The number of simultaneous active transactions that a block can ever have is constrained by the value of MAXTRANS and by the availability of space on the block. You may not be able to achieve 255 concurrent transactions on the block if there is not sufficient space to grow this structure.

We can artificially demonstrate how this works by creating a table with lots of rows packed into a single block such that the block is very full from the start; there will be very little room left on the block after we initially load our data. The presence of these rows will limit how large the transaction table can grow, due to the lack of space. I was using an 8KB block size and I tested this particular example in all versions of Oracle from 9i Release 2 through 12c Release 1 with the same results (so, if you have an 8KB blocksize, you should be able to reproduce this). We’ll start by creating our packed table. I played around with different lengths of data until I arrived at this very special size:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table t
2 ( x int primary key,
3 y varchar2(4000)
4 )
5 /
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into t (x,y)
2 select rownum, rpad('*',148,'*')
3 from dual
4 connect by level <= 46;
46 rows created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select length(y),
2 dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid) blk,
3 count(*), min(x), max(x)
4 from t
5 group by length(y), dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid);

LENGTH(Y) BLK COUNT(*) MIN(X) MAX(X)
---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
148 23470 46 1 46

So, our table has 46 rows, all on the same block. I chose 148 characters because if it was one character more, we’d need two blocks to hold these same 46 records. Now, we need a way to see what happens when many transactions try to lock data on this single block simultaneously. For that, we’ll use an AUTONOMOUS_TRANSACTION again, just so we can use a single session and not have to run lots of concurrent SQL*Plus sessions. Our stored procedure will lock a row in the table by the primary key starting with a primary key value of 1 (the first record inserted). If our procedure gets the lock on this row without having to wait (without getting blocked), it will simply increase the primary key value by 1 and, using recursion, do it all over again. So, the second call will try to lock record 2, the third call record 3, and so on. If the procedure is made to wait, it will raise an ORA-54 resource busy error and we’ll print out “locked out trying to select row <primary key value>”. That will indicate we ran out of transaction slots on this block before we ran out of rows to lock. On the other hand, if we find no row to lock, that means we’ve already locked every row on this block and we print out success (meaning, the transaction table in the block header was able to grow to accommodate all of the transactions). Here is that stored procedure:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create or replace procedure do_update( p_n in number )
2 as
3 pragma autonomous_transaction;
4 l_rec t%rowtype;
5 resource_busy exception;
6 pragma exception_init( resource_busy, -54 );
7 begin
8 select *
9 into l_rec
10 from t
11 where x = p_n
12 for update NOWAIT;
13
14 do_update( p_n+1 );
15 commit;
16 exception
17 when resource_busy
18 then
19 dbms_output.put_line( 'locked out trying to select row ' || p_n );
20 commit;
21 when no_data_found
22 then
23 dbms_output.put_line( 'we finished - no problems' );
24 commit;
25 end;
26 /
Procedure created.

The magic is on line 14 where we recursively call ourselves with a new primary key value to lock over and over. If you run the procedure after populating the table with 148 character strings, you should observe:

EODA@ORA12CR1> exec do_update(1);
locked out trying to select row 38
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

This output shows that we were able to lock 37 rows but ran out of transaction slots for the 38th row. For this given block, a maximum of 37 transactions can concurrently access it. If we redo the example with a slightly smaller string we’ll see that if finishes with no problems:

EODA@ORA12CR1> truncate table t;
Table truncated.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into t (x,y)
2 select rownum, rpad('*',147,'*')
3 from dual
4 connect by level <= 46;
46 rows created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select length(y),
2 dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid) blk,
3 count(*), min(x), max(x)
4 from t
5 group by length(y), dbms_rowid.rowid_block_number(rowid);

LENGTH(Y) BLK COUNT(*) MIN(X) MAX(X)
---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
147 23470 46 1 46

EODA@ORA12CR1> exec do_update(1);
we finished - no problems
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

This time we completed successfully—the difference a single byte makes! In this case, having the extra 46 bytes of space free on the block (each of the 46 strings was just one byte smaller) allowed us to have at least 9 more transactions active on the block.

This example demonstrates what happens when many transactions attempt to access the same block simultaneously—a wait on the transaction table may occur if there is an extremely high number of concurrent transactions. Blocking may occur if the INITRANS is set low and there is not enough space on a block to dynamically expand the transaction. In most cases, the default of 2 for INITRANS is sufficient, as the transaction table will dynamically grow (space permitting), but in some environments you may need to increase this setting (to reserve more room for slots) to increase concurrency and decrease waits.

An example of when you might need to increase the setting would be on a table or, even more frequently, on an index (since index blocks can get many more rows on them than a table can typically hold) that is frequently modified and has a lot of rows per block on average. You may need to increase either PCTFREE (discussed in Chapter 10) or INITRANS to set aside ahead of time sufficient space on the block for the number of expected concurrent transactions. This is especially true if you anticipate the blocks will be nearly full to begin with, meaning there is no room for the dynamic expansion of the transaction structure on the block.

One last note on INITRANS. A couple of times I’ve stated that the default value for this attribute is 2. However, if you examine the data dictionary after creating a table, you’ll notice that INITRANS displays a value of 1:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table t ( x int );
EODA@ORA12CR1> select ini_trans from user_tables where table_name = 'T';

INI_TRANS
----------
1

So is the default number of transaction slots 1 or 2? Even though the data dictionary is showing a value of 1, we can demonstrate that it really is 2. Consider this experiment. First generate one transaction for table T by inserting a single record:

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into t values ( 1 );

Now verify that one block is consumed by table T:

EODA@ORA12CR1> select dbms_rowid.ROWID_BLOCK_NUMBER(rowid) from t;
DBMS_ROWID.ROWID_BLOCK_NUMBER(ROWID)
------------------------------------
57715

Next, place into the variables—B and F—the block number and the data file number of the block used by table T:

EODA@ORA12CR1> column b new_val B
EODA@ORA12CR1> column f new_val F
EODA@ORA12CR1> select dbms_rowid.ROWID_BLOCK_NUMBER(rowid) B,
2 dbms_rowid.ROWID_TO_ABSOLUTE_FNO( rowid, user, 'T' ) F
3 from t;

Now dump the block being used by table T:

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter system dump datafile &F block &B;

Next, place into a variable named TRACE the location and name of the trace file containing the dump information for the block:

EODA@ORA12CR1> column trace new_val TRACE

EODA@ORA12CR1> select c.value || '/' || d.instance_name || '_ora_' || a.spid || '.trc' trace
2 from v$process a, v$session b, v$parameter c, v$instance d
3 where a.addr = b.paddr
4 and b.audsid = userenv('sessionid')
5 and c.name = 'user_dump_dest';

Now terminate the session and edit the trace file:

EODA@ORA12CR1> disconnect
EODA@ORA12CR1> edit &TRACE

Searching the trace file for the value of Itl, we see there are two transaction slots that have been initialized (even though there has only been one transaction issued for this table):

Itl Xid Uba Flag Lck Scn/Fsc
0x01 0x0013.00e.000024be 0x00c000bf.039e.2d --U- 1 fsc 0x0000.01cfa56a
0x02 0x0000.000.00000000 0x00000000.0000.00 ---- 0 fsc 0x0000.00000000

The INITRANS value of 1 reported in the data dictionary is most likely a legacy value and it really should display a value of 2 for more current versions of Oracle.

TM (DML Enqueue) Locks

TM locks are used to ensure that the structure of a table is not altered while you are modifying its contents. For example, if you have updated a table, you will acquire a TM lock on that table. This will prevent another user from executing DROP or ALTER commands on that table. If another user attempts to perform DDL on the table while you have a TM lock on it, he’ll receive the following error message:

drop table dept
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified

Note In Oracle 11g Release 2 and above, you may set DDL_LOCK_TIMEOUT in order to have DDL wait. This is achieved typically via the ALTER SESSION command. For example, you could issue ALTER SESSION SET DDL_LOCK_TIMEOUT=60; before issuing the DROP TABLE command. The DROP TABLE command issued would then wait 60 seconds before returning an error (or it could succeed, of course, as well).

The ORA-00054 message is a confusing message at first, since there is no direct method to specify NOWAIT or WAIT on a DROP TABLE at all. It is just the generic message you get when you attempt to perform an operation that would be blocked, but the operation does not permit blocking. As you’ve seen before, it’s the same message you get if you issue a SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT against a locked row.

The following shows how these locks would appear in the V$LOCK table:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table t1 ( x int );
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table t2 ( x int );
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into t1 values ( 1 );
1 row created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> insert into t2 values ( 1 );
1 row created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select (select username
2 from v$session
3 where sid = v$lock.sid) username,
4 sid,
5 id1,
6 id2,
7 lmode,
8 request, block, v$lock.type
9 from v$lock
10 where sid = sys_context('userenv','sid');

USERNAME SID ID1 ID2 LMODE REQUEST BLOCK TY
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --
EODA 22 133 0 4 0 0 AE
EODA 22 244271 0 3 0 0 TM
EODA 22 244270 0 3 0 0 TM
EODA 22 1966095 152 6 0 0 TX

EODA@ORA12CR1> select object_name, object_id
2 from user_objects
3 where object_id in (244271,244270);

OBJECT_NAM OBJECT_ID
---------- ----------
T2 244271
T1 244270

Note The AE lock is an edition lock, available in Oracle 11g and above. It is part of the Edition Based Redefinition feature (not covered in this particular book). ID1 is the object id of the edition that SID is using currently. This edition lock protects the referenced edition from modification (dropping of the edition, for example) in much the same way the TM locks protect the tables they point to from structural modification.

Whereas we get only one TX lock per transaction, we can get as many TM locks as the objects we modify. Here, the interesting thing is that the ID1 column for the TM lock is the object ID of the DML-locked object, so it is easy to find the object on which the lock is being held.

An interesting aside to the TM lock: the total number of TM locks allowed in the system is configurable by you (for details, see the DML_LOCKS parameter definition in the Oracle Database Reference manual). It may, in fact, be set to zero. This does not mean that your database becomes a read-only database (no locks), but rather that DDL is not permitted. This is useful in very specialized applications, such as RAC implementations, to reduce the amount of intra-instance coordination that would otherwise take place. You can also remove the ability to gain TM locks on an object-by-object basis using the ALTER TABLE <TABLENAME> DISABLE TABLE LOCK command. This is a quick way to make it harder to accidentally drop a table, as you will have to reenable the table lock before dropping the table. It can also be used to detect a full table lock as a result of the unindexed foreign key we discussed previously.

DDL Locks

DDL locks are automatically placed against objects during a DDL operation to protect them from changes by other sessions. For example, if I perform the DDL operation ALTER TABLE T, the table T will in general have an exclusive DDL lock placed against it, preventing other sessions from getting DDL locks and TM locks on this table.

Note Oracle 11g has modified what used to be a rule. In the past, ALTER TABLE T would have an exclusive DDL lock placed against it. In this example, table T prevents other sessions from performing DDL and acquiring TM locks (used to modify the contents of the table). Now, many ALTER commands can be performed online—without preventing modifications.

DDL locks are held for the duration of the DDL statement and are released immediately afterward. This is done, in effect, by always wrapping DDL statements in implicit commits (or a commit/rollback pair). For this reason, DDL always commits in Oracle. Every CREATE, ALTER, and so on statement is really executed as shown in this pseudo-code:

Begin
Commit;
DDL-STATEMENT
Commit;
Exception
When others then rollback;
End;

So, DDL will always commit, even if it is unsuccessful. DDL starts by committing; be aware of this. It commits first so that if it has to roll back, it will not roll back your transaction. If you execute DDL, it will make permanent any outstanding work you have performed, even if the DDL is not successful. If you need to execute DDL, but you do not want it to commit your existing transaction, you may use an autonomous transaction.

There are three types of DDL locks:

· Exclusive DDL locks: These prevent other sessions from gaining a DDL lock or TM (DML) lock themselves. This means that you may query a table during a DDL operation, but you may not modify it in any way.

· Share DDL locks: These protect the structure of the referenced object against modification by other sessions, but allow modifications to the data.

· Breakable parse locks: These allow an object, such as a query plan cached in the shared pool, to register its reliance on some other object. If you perform DDL against that object, Oracle will review the list of objects that have registered their dependence and invalidate them. Hence, these locks are breakable—they do not prevent the DDL from occurring.

Most DDL takes an exclusive DDL lock. If you issue a statement such as

Alter table t move;

the table T will be unavailable for modifications during the execution of that statement. The table may be queried using SELECT during this time, but most other operations will be prevented, including all other DDL statements. In Oracle, some DDL operations may now take place without DDL locks. For example, I can issue the following:

Create index t_idx on t(x) ONLINE;

The ONLINE keyword modifies the method by which the index is actually built. Instead of taking an exclusive DDL lock, preventing modifications of data, Oracle will only attempt to acquire a low-level (mode 2) TM lock on the table. This will effectively prevent other DDL from taking place, but it will allow DML to occur normally. Oracle accomplishes this feat by keeping a record of modifications made to the table during the DDL statement and applying these changes to the new index as it finishes the CREATE action. This greatly increases the availability of data. To see this for yourself, you could create a table of some size:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create table t as select * from all_objects;
Table created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select object_id from user_objects where object_name = 'T';

OBJECT_ID
----------
244277

And then run the create index against that table:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create index t_idx on t(owner,object_type,object_name) ONLINE;

While at the same time running this query in another session to see the locks taken against that newly created table (remember, ID1=244277 is specific to my example, you’ll want to use your object ID).

EODA@ORA12CR1> select (select username
2 from v$session
3 where sid = v$lock.sid) username,
4 sid,
5 id1,
6 id2,
7 lmode,
8 request, block, v$lock.type
9 from v$lock
10 where id1 = 244277
11 /

USERNAME SID ID1 ID2 LMODE REQUEST BLOCK TY
--------------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --
EODA 22 244277 0 3 0 0 DL
EODA 22 244277 0 3 0 0 DL
EODA 22 244277 0 2 0 0 TM
EODA 22 244277 0 4 0 0 OD

So, here we see four locks taken out against our object. The two DL locks are direct load locks. They are used to prevent a direct path load into our base table while the index creation is taking place (which implies, of course, that you cannot directly path load the table AND create the index simultaneously). The OD lock is a lock type first appeared with Oracle 11g (you would not see that lock in 10g or 9i) that permits truly online DDL. In the past (10g and before), online DDL such as CREATE INDEX ONLINE was not 100 percent online. It would take a lock at the beginning and end of the CREATE statement—preventing other concurrent activities (modifications of the base table data). It was mostly online but not completely online. Starting with 11g, the CREATE INDEX ONLINE command is completely online; it does not require exclusionary locks at the beginning/end of the command. Part of the implementation to accomplish this feat was the introduction of the OD (Online DDL) lock; it is used internally to allow truly online DDL operations.

Other types of DDL take share DDL locks. These are taken out against dependent objects when you create stored, compiled objects, such as procedures and views. For example, if you execute the following, share DDL locks will be placed against both EMP and DEPT while the CREATE VIEW command is being processed:

Create view MyView
as
select emp.empno, emp.ename, dept.deptno, dept.dname
from emp, dept
where emp.deptno = dept.deptno;

You can modify the contents of these tables, but you cannot modify their structure.

The last type of DDL lock is a breakable parse lock. When your session parses a statement, a parse lock is taken against every object referenced by that statement. These locks are taken in order to allow the parsed, cached statement to be invalidated (flushed) in the shared pool if a referenced object is dropped or altered in some way.

A view that is invaluable for looking at this information is DBA_DDL_LOCKS. There is no V$ view. The DBA_DDL_LOCKS view is built on the more mysterious X$ tables and, by default, it might not be installed in your database. You can install this and other locking views by running the catblock.sql script found in the directory [ORACLE_HOME]/rdbms/admin. This script must be executed as the user SYS in order to succeed. Once you have executed this script, you can run a query against the view. For example, in a freshly connected session, I might see the following:

EODA@ORA12CR1> connect eoda/foo
Connected.
EODA@ORA12CR1> set linesize 1000
EODA@ORA12CR1> select session_id sid, owner, name, type,
2 mode_held held, mode_requested request
3 from dba_ddl_locks
4 where session_id = (select sid from v$mystat where rownum=1)
5 /

SID OWNER NAME TYPE HELD REQUEST
------ -------- --------------------- -------------------- ---------- --------
22 SYS DBMS_OUTPUT Body Null None
22 SYS DBMS_OUTPUT Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 EODA EODA 18 Null None
22 SYS DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO Body Null None
22 SYS PLITBLM Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 SYS DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 EODA 73 Share None
22 SYS DATABASE 18 Null None

8 rows selected.

These are all the objects that my session is locking. I have breakable parse locks on a couple of the DBMS_* packages. These are a side effect of using SQL*Plus; it might call DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO, for example, when you initially log in (to enable/disable DBMS_OUTPUT via theSET SERVEROUTPUT command). I may see more than one copy of various objects here; this is normal, and it just means I have more than one thing I’m using in the shared pool that references these objects. Note that in the view, the OWNER column is not the owner of the lock; rather, it is the owner of the object being locked. This is why you see many SYS rows. SYS owns these packages, but they all belong to my session.

To see a breakable parse lock in action, let’s first create and run a stored procedure, P:

EODA@ORA12CR1> create or replace procedure p
2 as
3 begin
4 null;
5 end;
6 /
Procedure created.

EODA@ORA12CR1> exec p
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

The procedure, P, will now show up in the DBA_DDL_LOCKS view. We have a parse lock on it:

EODA@ORA12CR1> select session_id sid, owner, name, type,
2 mode_held held, mode_requested request
3 from dba_ddl_locks
4 where session_id = (select sid from v$mystat where rownum=1)
5 /

SID OWNER NAME TYPE HELD REQUEST
------ -------- --------------------- -------------------- ---------- --------
22 EODA P Table/Procedure/Type Null None
...
22 SYS DATABASE 18 Null None
9 rows selected.

We then recompile our procedure and query the view again:

EODA@ORA12CR1> alter procedure p compile;
Procedure altered.

EODA@ORA12CR1> select session_id sid, owner, name, type,
2 mode_held held, mode_requested request
3 from dba_ddl_locks
4 where session_id = (select sid from v$mystat where rownum=1)
5 /

SID OWNER NAME TYPE HELD REQUEST
------ -------- --------------------- -------------------- ---------- --------
22 SYS DBMS_OUTPUT Body Null None
22 SYS DBMS_OUTPUT Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 EODA EODA 18 Null None
22 SYS DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO Body Null None
22 SYS PLITBLM Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 SYS DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO Table/Procedure/Type Null None
22 EODA 73 Share None
22 SYS DATABASE 18 Null None
8 rows selected.

We find that P is now missing from the view. Our parse lock has been broken.

This view is useful to you, as a developer, when it is found that some piece of code won’t compile in the test or development system—it hangs and eventually times out. This indicates that someone else is using it (actually running it), and you can use this view to see who that might be. The same will happen with GRANT statements and other types of DDL against the object. You cannot grant EXECUTE on a procedure that is running, for example. You can use the same method to discover the potential blockers and waiters.

Note Oracle 11g Release 2 and above introduces the feature Edition-based redefinition (EBR). With EBR, you can, in fact, grant EXECUTE and/or recompile code in the database without interfering with users currently executing the code. EBR allows you to have multiple versions of the same stored procedure in a schema at once. This allows you to work on a copy of the procedure in a new edition (version) without contending with the current version of the procedure being used by other users. We will not be covering EBR in this book, however, just mentioning it when it changes the rules.

Latches

Latches are lightweight serialization devices used to coordinate multiuser access to shared data structures, objects, and files.

Latches are locks designed to be held for extremely short periods of time—for example, the time it takes to modify an in-memory data structure. They are used to protect certain memory structures, such as the database block buffer cache or the library cache in the shared pool. Latches are typically requested internally in a willing to wait mode. This means that if the latch is not available, the requesting session will sleep for a short period of time and retry the operation later. Other latches may be requested in an immediate mode, which is similar in concept to a SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT, meaning that the process will go do something else, such as try to grab an equivalent sibling latch that may be free, rather than sit and wait for this latch to become available. Since many requestors may be waiting for a latch at the same time, you may see some processes waiting longer than others. Latches are assigned rather randomly, based on the luck of the draw, if you will. Whichever session asks for a latch right after it was released will get it. There is no line of latch waiters—just a mob of waiters constantly retrying.

Oracle uses atomic instructions like “test and set” and “compare and swap” for operating on latches. Since the instructions to set and free latches are atomic, the operating system itself guarantees that only one process gets to test and set the latch even though many processes may be going for it simultaneously. Since the instruction is only one instruction, it can be quite fast (but the overall latching algorithm itself is many CPU instructions). Latches are held for short periods of time and provide a mechanism for cleanup in case a latch holder dies abnormally while holding it. This cleanup process would be performed by PMON.

Enqueues, which we discussed earlier, are another, more sophisticated serialization device used when updating rows in a database table, for example. They differ from latches in that they allow the requestor to queue up and wait for the resource. With a latch request, the requestor session is told right away whether or not it got the latch. With an enqueue lock, the requestor session will be blocked until it can actually attain it.

Note Using SELECT FOR UPDATE NOWAIT or WAIT [n], you can optionally decide not to wait for an enqueue lock if your session would be blocked, but if you do block and wait, you will wait in a queue.

As such, an enqueue is not as fast as a latch can be, but it does provide functionality over and above what a latch can offer. Enqueues may be obtained at various levels, so you can have many share locks and locks with various degrees of shareability.

Latch “Spinning”

One thing I’d like to drive home with regard to latches is this: latches are a type of lock, locks are serialization devices, and serialization devices inhibit scalability. If your goal is to construct an application that scales well in an Oracle environment, you must look for approaches and solutions that minimize the amount of latching you need to perform.

Even seemingly simple activities, such as parsing a SQL statement, acquire and release hundreds or thousands of latches on the library cache and related structures in the shared pool. If we have a latch, then someone else might be waiting for it. When we go to get a latch, we may well have to wait for it ourselves.

Waiting for a latch can be an expensive operation. If the latch is not available immediately and we are willing to wait for it, as we likely are most of the time, then on a multi-CPU machine our session will spin, trying over and over, in a loop, to get the latch. The reasoning behind this is that context switching (i.e., getting kicked off the CPU and having to get back on the CPU) is expensive. So, if the process cannot get a latch immediately, we’ll stay on the CPU and try again immediately rather than just going to sleep, giving up the CPU, and trying later when we’ll have to get scheduled back on the CPU. The hope is that the holder of the latch is busy processing on the other CPU (and since latches are designed to be held for very short periods of time, this is likely) and will give it up soon. If after spinning and constantly trying to get the latch, we still fail to obtain it, only then will our process sleep, or take itself off of the CPU, and let some other work take place. This sleep action is usually the result of many sessions concurrently requesting the same latch; it is not that a single session is holding it for a long time, but rather that so many sessions want it at the same time and each hold it for a short duration. If you do something short (fast) often enough, it adds up! The pseudo-code for a latch get might look like this:

Loop
for i in 1 .. 2000
loop
try to get latch
if got latch, return
if i = 1 then misses=misses+1
end loop
INCREMENT WAIT COUNT
sleep
Add WAIT TIME
End loop;

The logic is to try to get the latch and, failing that, to increment the miss count, a statistic we can see in a Statspack report or by querying the V$LATCH view directly. Once the process misses, it will loop some number of times (an undocumented parameter controls the number of times and is typically set to 2,000), attempting to get the latch over and over. If one of these get attempts succeeds, then it returns and we continue processing. If they all fail, the process will go to sleep for a short duration of time, after incrementing the sleep count for that latch. Upon waking up, the process begins all over again. This implies that the cost of getting a latch is not just the “test and set”-type operation that takes place, but also a considerable amount of CPU while we try to get the latch. Our system will appear to be very busy (with much CPU being consumed), but not much work is getting done.

Measuring the Cost of Latching a Shared Resource

As an example, we’ll study the cost of latching the shared pool. We’ll compare a well-written program (one that uses bind variables) and a program that is not so well written (it uses literal SQL, or unique SQL for each statement). To do this, we’ll use a very small Java program that simply logs into Oracle, turns off auto-commit (as all Java programs should do immediately after connecting to a database), and executes 25,000 unique INSERT statements in a loop. We’ll perform two sets of tests: our program will not use bind variables in the first set, and in the second set it will.

To evaluate these programs and their behavior in a multiuser environment, I opted to use Statspack to gather the metrics, as follows:

1. Execute a Statspack snapshot to gather the current state of the system.

2. Run N copies of the program, having each program INSERT into its own database table so as to avoid the contention associated with having all programs trying to insert into a single table.

3. Take another snapshot immediately after the last copy of the program finishes.

Then it is a simple matter of printing out the Statspack report and finding out how long it took N copies of the program to complete, how much CPU was used, what major wait events occurred, and so on.

Note Why not use AWR (Automatic Workload Repository) to perform this analysis? The answer to that is because everyone has access to Statspack, everyone. It might have to be installed by your DBA, but every Oracle customer has access to it. I want to present results that are reproducible by everyone.

These tests were performed on a dual-CPU machine with hyperthreading enabled (making it appear as if there were four CPUs). Given that there were two physical CPUs, you might expect very linear scaling here—that is, if one user uses 1 unit of CPU to process her inserts, then you might expect that two users would require 2 units of CPU. You’ll discover that this premise, while sounding plausible, may well be inaccurate (just how inaccurate depends on your programming technique, as you’ll see). It would be correct if the processing we were performing needed no shared resource, but our process will use a shared resource, namely the shared pool. We need to latch the shared pool to parse SQL statements, and we need to latch the shared pool because it is a shared data structure, and we cannot modify it while others are reading it and we cannot read it while it is being modified.

Note I’ve performed these tests using Java, PL/SQL, Pro*C, and other languages. The end results are very much the same every time. This demonstration and discussion applies to all languages and all interfaces to the database. I chose Java for this example as I find Java and Visual Basic applications are most likely to not use bind variables when working with the Oracle database.

Setting Up for the Test

In order to test, we’ll need a schema (set of tables) to work with. We’ll be testing with multiple users and want to measure the contention due to latching most of all, meaning that we’re not interested in measuring the contention you might observe due to multiple sessions inserting into the same database table. So, we’ll want a table per user to be created and we’ll name these tables T1 . . . T10. For example:

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> connect scott/tiger
Connected.

SCOTT@ORA12CR1> begin
2 for i in 1 .. 10
3 loop
4 for x in (select * from user_tables where table_name = 'T'||i )
5 loop
6 execute immediate 'drop table ' || x.table_name;
7 end loop;
8 execute immediate 'create table t' || i || ' ( x int )';
9 end loop;
10 end;
11 /

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

We’ll run this script before each iteration of the test to follow in order to reset our schema and to force hard parsing to take place if we run a test more than once. During our testing, we’ll follow these steps:

1. Run statspack.snap.

2. Immediately start N of our Java routines, where N will vary from 1 to 10, representing 1 to 10 concurrent users.

3. Wait for all N to complete.

4. Run statspack.snap.

5. Generate the Statspack report for the last two Statspack IDs.

The numbers presented for the following test runs were collected using this technique.

Tip The scripts to automate the test described in this section are available for download from the Apress web site for this book. In the ch06 folder there are two subdirectories: nobinds and binds. Within those directories the run.sql script calls the required code to execute this test. You’ll need to modify the code to reflect your database connection information, where appropriate. And, of course, you’ll also have to compile the Java program on your server.

Without Bind Variables

In the first instance, our program will not use bind variables, but rather will use string concatenation to insert data (you will obviously have to use your own connect string for your system):

import java.sql.*;
public class instest
{
static public void main(String args[]) throws Exception
{
DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());
Connection
conn = DriverManager.getConnection
("jdbc:oracle:thin:@heesta:1521:ORA12CR1","scott","tiger");
conn.setAutoCommit( false );
Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
for( int i = 0; i < 25000; i++ )
{
stmt.execute
("insert into "+ args[0] +
" (x) values(" + i + ")" );
}
conn.commit();
conn.close();
}
}

I ran the test in single user mode (that is, by itself with no other active database sessions), and the Statspack report came back with this information:

Elapsed: 0.25 (mins) Av Act Sess: 0.9
DB time: 0.22 (mins) DB CPU: 0.20 (mins)

Cache Sizes Begin End
~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- ----------
Buffer Cache: 2,656M Std Block Size: 8K
Shared Pool: 640M Log Buffer: 14,808K

Load Profile Per Second Per Transaction Per Exec Per Call
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------ ----------------- ----------- -----------
...
Parses: 3,342.1 25,066.0
Hard parses: 1,667.2 12,504.0
...
Instance Efficiency Indicators
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffer Nowait %: 100.00 Redo NoWait %: 100.00
Buffer Hit %: 99.99 Optimal W/A Exec %: 100.00
Library Hit %: 60.05 Soft Parse %: 50.12
Execute to Parse %: 0.11 Latch Hit %: 100.00
Parse CPU to Parse Elapsd %: 108.72 % Non-Parse CPU: 16.29
...
Top 5 Timed Events Avg %Total
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ wait Call
Event Waits Time (s) (ms) Time
----------------------------------------- ------------ ----------- ------ ------
AQPC idle 1 30 30010 36.1
heartbeat redo informer 15 15 1004 18.1
LGWR worker group idle 14 15 1055 17.8
lreg timer 4 12 3001 14.4
CPU time 11 13.4

I included the SGA configuration for reference, but the relevant statistics are as follows:

· Elapsed (DB time) time of approximately 15 seconds (0.25 of a minute)

· 1,667 hard parses per second

· 11 CPU seconds used

Now, if we were to run two of these programs simultaneously, we might expect the hard parsing to jump to about 3,300 per second (we have two CPUs available, after all) and the CPU time to double to perhaps 22 CPU seconds. Let’s take a look:

Elapsed: 0.27 (mins) Av Act Sess: 1.6
DB time: 0.44 (mins) DB CPU: 0.41 (mins)
...
Load Profile Per Second Per Transaction Per Exec Per Call
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------ ----------------- ----------- -----------
...
Parses: 6,259.8 33,385.3
Hard parses: 3,125.6 16,669.7
...
Instance Efficiency Indicators
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffer Nowait %: 100.00 Redo NoWait %: 100.00
Buffer Hit %: 99.99 Optimal W/A Exec %: 100.00
Library Hit %: 60.03 Soft Parse %: 50.07
Execute to Parse %: 0.06 Latch Hit %: 98.41
Parse CPU to Parse Elapsd %: 96.28 % Non-Parse CPU: 15.06
...
Top 5 Timed Events Avg %Total
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ wait Call
Event Waits Time (s) (ms) Time
----------------------------------------- ------------ ----------- ------ ------
CPU time 23 32.7
LGWR worker group idle 18 16 876 22.8
heartbeat redo informer 15 15 1005 21.8
lreg timer 5 15 3001 21.7
latch: shared pool 15,076 0 0 .6

What we discover is that the hard parsing goes up somewhat, and the CPU time more than doubles. How could that be? The answer lies in Oracle’s implementation of latching. On this multi-CPU machine, when we could not immediately get a latch, we spun. The act of spinning itself consumes CPU. Process 1 attempted many times to get a latch onto the shared pool only to discover that process 2 held that latch, so process 1 had to spin and wait for it (consuming CPU). The converse would be true for process 2; many times it would find that process 1 was holding the latch to the resource it needed. So, much of our processing time was spent not doing real work, but waiting for a resource to become available. If we page down through the Statspack report to the “Latch Sleep Breakdown” report, we discover the following:

Latch Name Requests Misses Sleeps Gets
-------------------------- --------------- ------------ ----------- -----------
shared pool 2,296,041 75,240 15,267 60,165

Note how the number 15,267 appears in the SLEEPS column here? That number corresponds very closely to the number of WAITS reported in the preceding “Top 5 Timed Events” report.

Note The number of sleeps corresponds closely to the number of waits; this might raise an eyebrow. Why not exactly? The reason is that the act of taking a snapshot is not atomic; a series of queries are executed gathering statistics into tables during a Statspack snapshot, and each query isas of a slightly different point in time. So, the wait event metrics were gathered at a time slightly before the latching details were.

Our “Latch Sleep Breakdown” report shows us the number of times we tried to get a latch and failed in the spin loop. That means the Top 5 report is showing us only the tip of the iceberg with regard to latching issues—the 75,240 misses (which means we spun trying to get the latch) are not revealed in the Top 5 report for us. After examination of the Top 5 report, we might not be inclined to think we have a hard parse problem here, even though we have a very serious one. To perform 2 units of work, we needed to use more than 2 units of CPU. This was due entirely to the fact that we need that shared resource, the shared pool. Such is the nature of latching.

You can see that it can be very hard to diagnose a latching-related issue, unless you understand the mechanics of how they are implemented. A quick glance at a Statspack report, using the Top 5 section, might cause us to miss the fact that we have a fairly bad scaling issue on our hands. Only by deeper investigation in the latching section of the Statspack report will we see the problem at hand.

Additionally, it is not normally possible to determine how much of the CPU time used by the system is due to this spinning—all we know in looking at the two-user test is that we used 23 seconds of CPU time and that we missed getting a latch on the shared pool 75,240 times. We don’t know how many times we spun trying to get the latch each time we missed, so we have no real way of gauging how much of the CPU time was spent spinning and how much was spent processing. We need multiple data points to derive that information.

In our tests, because we have the single-user example for comparison, we can conclude that about 1 CPU seconds or so was spent spinning on the latch, waiting for that resource. We can come to this conclusion because we know that a single user needs only 11 seconds of CPU time so two single users would need 22 seconds, and 23 (total CPU seconds) minus 22 is 1.

With Bind Variables

Now I’d like to look at the same situation as presented in the previous section, but this time using a program that uses significantly less latches during its processing. We’ll take that Java program and code it using bind variables. To accomplish this, we’ll change the Statement into aPreparedStatement, parse a single INSERT statement, and then bind and execute that PreparedStatement repeatedly in the loop:

import java.sql.*;
public class instest
{
static public void main(String args[]) throws Exception
{
System.out.println( "start" );
DriverManager.registerDriver(new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver());
Connection
conn = DriverManager.getConnection
("jdbc:oracle:thin:@heesta:1521:ORA12CR1", "scott","tiger");
conn.setAutoCommit( false );
PreparedStatement pstmt =
conn.prepareStatement
("insert into "+ args[0] + " (x) values(?)" );
for( int i = 0; i < 25000; i++ )
{
pstmt.setInt( 1, i );
pstmt.executeUpdate();
}
conn.commit();
conn.close();
System.out.println( "done" );
}
}

Let’s look at the single and dual user Statspack reports, as we did for the no bind variable example. We’ll see dramatic differences here. Here is the single-user report:

Elapsed: 0.07 (mins) Av Act Sess: 0.6
DB time: 0.04 (mins) DB CPU: 0.03 (mins)

Cache Sizes Begin End
~~~~~~~~~~~ ---------- ----------
Buffer Cache: 2,656M Std Block Size: 8K
Shared Pool: 640M Log Buffer: 14,808K

Load Profile Per Second Per Transaction Per Exec Per Call
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------ ----------------- ----------- -----------
...
Parses: 158.5 317.0
Hard parses: 29.8 59.5
...
Instance Efficiency Indicators
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffer Nowait %: 100.00 Redo NoWait %: 100.00
Buffer Hit %: 98.99 Optimal W/A Exec %: 100.00
Library Hit %: 96.14 Soft Parse %: 81.23
Execute to Parse %: 97.72 Latch Hit %: 100.00
Parse CPU to Parse Elapsd %: 87.10 % Non-Parse CPU: 71.58
...
Top 5 Timed Events Avg %Total
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ wait Call
Event Waits Time (s) (ms) Time
----------------------------------------- ------------ ----------- ------ ------
AQPC idle 1 30 30004 66.6
lreg timer 2 6 3004 13.3
heartbeat redo informer 4 4 1006 8.9
LGWR worker group idle 12 4 331 8.8
CPU time 1 2.1

That is quite dramatic: from 11 CPU seconds in the no bind variables example to 1 CPU second here. From 1,667 hard parses per second to about 29 per second (and based on my knowledge of how Stats pack works, most of those were from running Statspack). Even the elapsed time was dramatically reduced from about 15 seconds down to 4 seconds (0.07 minutes). When not using bind variables, we spent ten-elevenths of our CPU time parsing SQL (1 second versus 11). This was not entirely latch related, as much of the CPU time incurred without bind variables was spent parsing and optimizing the SQL. Parsing SQL is very CPU intensive, but to expend ten-elevenths of our CPU doing something (parsing) that doesn’t really do useful work for us—work we didn’t need to perform—is pretty expensive.

When we get to the two-user test, the results continue to look better:

Elapsed: 0.08 (mins) Av Act Sess: 0.9
DB time: 0.07 (mins) DB CPU: 0.07 (mins)
...
Load Profile Per Second Per Transaction Per Exec Per Call
~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------ ----------------- ----------- -----------
...
Parses: 25.6 42.7
Hard parses: 0.8 1.3
...
Instance Efficiency Indicators
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Buffer Nowait %: 100.00 Redo NoWait %: 100.00
Buffer Hit %: 99.93 Optimal W/A Exec %: 100.00
Library Hit %: 99.97 Soft Parse %: 96.88
Execute to Parse %: 99.74 Latch Hit %: 99.99
Parse CPU to Parse Elapsd %: 100.00 % Non-Parse CPU: 99.66
...
Top 5 Timed Events Avg %Total
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ wait Call
Event Waits Time (s) (ms) Time
----------------------------------------- ------------ ----------- ------ ------
AQPC idle 1 30 30012 74.6
heartbeat redo informer 4 4 1010 10.0
lreg timer 1 3 3000 7.5
CPU time 3 7.3
log file parallel write 22 0 5 .3

The amount of CPU time is about 2 to 3 times the amount reported by the single-user test case.

Note Due to rounding, the 1 CPU seconds is really anywhere from 0 to 2, and the 3 is really anywhere from 2 to 4 seconds.

Further, the amount of CPU used by two users with bind variables is far less than half the amount of CPU a single user not using bind variables required! When I looked at the latch report in this Statspack report, I found there was so little contention for the shared pool and library cache that it was not even worth reporting. In fact, digging deeper turned up the fact that the shared pool latch was requested 50,511 times versus well over 2.2 million times in the preceding two-user test without binds:

Latch Name Requests Misses Sleeps Gets
-------------------------- --------------- ------------ ----------- -----------
shared pool 50,511 48 1 47

Performance/Scalability Comparison

Table 6-1 summarizes the CPU usage by each implementation, as well as the latching results as we increase the number of users beyond two. As you can see, the solution using fewer latches (binds) will scale much better as the user load goes up.

Table 6-1. CPU Usage Comparison with and Without Bind Variables

*Note: Latch wait count is in thousands for No Binds, but not for Binds.

The interesting observation is that 10 users using bind variables (and very few latch requests as a result) use the same amount of hardware resources (CPU) as 1 user that does not use bind variables (i.e., that overuse a latch or process more than they need to). When you examine the results for 10 users, you see that nonuse of bind variables results in the use of over 14 times the CPU and takes almost 9 times the execution time when compared to the bind variable solution. The more users are added over time, the longer each user spends waiting for these latches. We went from an average of 0.6 seconds/session (3 seconds of wait/5 sessions) of wait time for latches with 5 users to an average of 1.7 seconds/session of wait time with 10 users. However, the implementation that avoided overuse of the latch suffered no ill effects as it scaled up.

Mutexes

A mutex is a serialization device much like a latch is, in fact, the name mutex stands for mutual exclusion. It is another serialization tool used by the database; it was introduced in Oracle 10g Release 1 and is used in place of traditional latches in many places in the server. A mutex differs from a latch in that it is even more lightweight in its implementation. It requires less code to implement, approximately one-fifth of the instructions (which results in less CPU to request in general) and it requires less memory, approximately one-seventh of the size, to implement. A mutex, in addition to being lighter weight, is a little less functional in some respects. Just like an enqueue lock is much heavier than a latch, a latch is heavier than a mutex. But, like the enqueue to latch comparison, the latch can do more than a mutex in some cases (like an enqueue can do more than a latch in some cases). This means that not every latch will be, or should be, replaced by a mutex, just as every enqueue lock will not be, or should not be, replaced by a latch.

When reading about mutexes in various reports, just remember that they are lighter-weight serialization devices. They enable possibly more scalability than a latch (just as latches are more scalable than enqueues), but they are still a serialization device. If you can avoid doing something that requires a mutex, in general, you should, for the same reason you would avoid requesting a latch if possible.

Manual Locking and User-Defined Locks

So far, we have looked mostly at locks that Oracle places for us transparently. When we update a table, Oracle places a TM lock on it to prevent other sessions from dropping that table (or performing most DDL, in fact). We have TX locks that are left on the various blocks we modify so others can tell what data we own. The database employs DDL locks to protect objects from change while we ourselves are changing them. It uses latches and locks internally to protect its own structure.

Next, let’s take a look at how we can get involved in some of this locking action. Our options are as follows:

· Manually lock data via a SQL statement.

· Create our own locks via the DBMS_LOCK package.

The following sections briefly discuss why you might want to do each of these.

Manual Locking

We have, in fact, already seen a couple of cases where we might want to use manual locking. The SELECT...FOR UPDATE statement is the predominant method of manually locking data. We used it in previous examples to avoid the lost update issue whereby one session would overwrite another session’s changes. We’ve seen it used as a method to serialize access to detail records to enforce business rules (e.g., the resource scheduler example from Chapter 1).

We can also manually lock data using the LOCK TABLE statement. This statement is used rarely, because of the coarseness of the lock. It simply locks the table, not the rows in the table. If you start modifying the rows, they will be locked as normal. So, this is not a method to save on resources (as it might be in other RDBMSs). You might use the LOCK TABLE IN EXCLUSIVE MODE statement if you were writing a large batch update that would affect most of the rows in a given table and you wanted to be sure that no one would block you. By locking the table in this manner, you can be assured that your update will be able to do all of its work without getting blocked by other transactions. It would be the rare application, however, that has a LOCK TABLE statement in it.

Creating Your Own Locks

Oracle actually exposes to developers the enqueue lock mechanism that it uses internally, via the DBMS_LOCK package. You might be wondering why you would want to create your own locks. The answer is typically application specific. For example, you might use this package to serialize access to some resource external to Oracle. Say you are using the UTL_FILE routine that allows you to write to a file on the server’s file system. You might have developed a common message routine that every application calls to record messages. Since the file is external, Oracle won’t coordinate the many users trying to modify it simultaneously. In comes the DBMS_LOCK package. Now, before you open, write, and close the file, you will request a lock named after the file in exclusive mode, and after you close the file, you will manually release the lock. In this fashion, only one person at a time will be able to write a message to this file. Everyone else will queue up. The DBMS_LOCK package allows you to manually release a lock when you are done with it, or to give it up automatically when you commit, or even to keep it as long as you are logged in.

Summary

This chapter covered a lot of material that, at times, may have made you scratch your head. While locking is rather straightforward, some of its side effects are not. However, it is vital that you understand these issues. For example, if you were not aware of the table lock Oracle uses to enforce a foreign key relationship when the foreign key is not indexed, then your application would suffer from poor performance. If you did not understand how to review the data dictionary to see who was locking whom, you might never figure that one out. You would just assume that the database hangs sometimes. I sometimes wish I had a dollar for every time I was able to solve the insolvable hanging issue by simply running the query to detect unindexed foreign keys and suggesting that we index the one causing the problem. I would be very rich.