Understanding Locks and Enqueues

How to Approach Common Blocking

Lock Scenarios

By Mark J. Bobak
November 20th, 2008
 Introduction
• Senior Oracle DBA at ProQuest Company
• Working with Oracle since version 6
• Present regularly at the local, national and
international level
• Member of the OakTable Network since 2001
 Disclaimer
• At least one statement in this presentation is
incorrect, but it may be this one.
 Agenda
• What is an Enqueue?
– Difference between locks, enqueues, and latches
• Characteristics of Enqueues
• Most Common Types of Enqueues
– TM – Table Modification Enqueue
– TX – Transaction Enqueue
• Wait Scenarios of TM and TX enqueues
• Anatomy of a row-level Lock
 What is an Enqueue?
• An Enqueue protects shared resources from
concurrent, incompatible accesses
– Prevent two sessions from writing the same row
of a table at the same time
– Facilitates enforcement of parent/child locking for
referential integrity
– Prevent two sessions from updating the definition
of a table (drop/add column, etc) at the same
time
 What is an Enqueue? (p.2)
• Enqueues differ from latches:
– Latches are the Database’s version of a mutex
– Whereas latches (mostly) provide for mutually
exclusive access, enqueues allow for shared access, if
mode is compatible
– Enqueues allow for enqueueing, that is, sessions
waiting for access to an enqueue will queue in a line
– In the case of latches, sessions waiting for access
must spin or sleep, and there’s no guarantee who will
get the latch next
 What is an Enqueue? (p.3)
• An Enqueue has three lists:
– Holder: List of sessions that currently hold the
enqueue, and in what mode
– Waiter: List of sessions that are waiting to acquire
the enqueue in a mode incompatible with what’s
being held
– Converter: List of sessions that are currently holding
the enqueue in one mode, and waiting to convert
their lock to a more restrictive mode, incompatible
with a mode already held by some other session
 Ok, but what’s an Enqueue, really??
• An enqueue is an element in an array of
enqueues that are allocated at SGA creation
time. (Visible in X$KSQEQ, number of
elements controlled by _enqueue_locks)
• It’s a state object, like so many other
components in the SGA. (process state
objects, session state objects, enqueue state
objects, etc.)
 Most Common Enqueue Types
• List of most common enqueues
– CF – Controlfile
– DM – Database Mount
– MR – Media Recovery
– RS – ?? (not documented in list of enqueue names for 10g
or 11g)
– RT – Redo Thread
– TM – DML
– TO – Temporary Table Object
– TS – Temporary Segment or Tablespace
– TX – Transaction
– UL – User Lock
 Most Common Enqueues
• Though there are many common enqueues,
usually only TM and TX create problems for
applications and developers.
• TM – DML, or table enqueue
• TX – Transaction enqueue
 TM Enqueue
• The TM or DML enqueue is taken at the table
level, by any session doing DDL or DML.
– DDL takes TM enqueue in ‘X’ (exclusive) mode,
which prevents other sessions doing any DML or
DDL while the table definition is changing
– DML takes TM enqueue in ‘S’ (shared) mode,
which allows for concurrent DML on the same
table, but locks out DDL.
 TM Enqueue (p. 2)
• Is used when foreign key relationships are
enforced
• Locking strategy is much more aggressive in
the case when indexes on the child table’s
foreign key columns are missing.
• Missing indexes on child table foreign key
columns is a common cause of waits and
deadlocks.
 TM Enqueue (p.3)
• One exception is direct load insert. In the case of
direct load insert, a session will take the TM
enqueue in ‘X’ mode. This prevents any other
DML from taking place while the direct load is
happening, in addition to blocking all DDL.

• TM enqueues may be disabled

– At the instance level, via dml_locks=0 (If RAC, all
instances must have same value of dml_locks)
– On a per table basis, with ‘alter table … disable locks;’
 TM Enqueue (p. 4)
• There are two different wait scenarios you’ll
likely encounter with the TM enqueue.
• ‘X’ mode waiting on ‘X’ mode being held.
– This is likely to be a session holding ‘X’ mode
during direct load insert, while another session
attempts to initiate a direct load into the same
table.
• ‘SSX’ mode waiting on ‘SX’ mode being held.
– This is due to unindexed foreign keys
 TX Enqueue
• The TX or Transaction Enqueue is at the heart
of Oracle’s row locking mechanism.
• The TX enqueue points to an undo segment
header, slot within that header, and wrap
number.
• Before images of any changes are stored in
the body of that undo segment, and point to
that segment header/slot/wrap.
 TX Enqueue (p. 2)
• When a transaction commits, the only action
that’s guaranteed to happen is that the undo
segment slot is marked committed, and the TX
enqueue is released.
• Many different wait scenarios may be
observed, each with a different root cause.
 TX Enqueue (p. 3)
• In every (known) case, the TX enqueue will be
held in ‘X’ mode.
• If a session is waiting to acquire a TX enqueue
in ‘X’ mode, it’s simple row-level locking or
PK/UK enforement on an existing row.
• If a session is waiting to acquire TX enqueue in
‘S’ mode, there are several possibilities.
– ITL slot shortage
 TX Enqueue (p.4)
• If a session is waiting to acquire TX enqueue in
‘S’ mode, there are several possibilities.
(cont.)
– Bitmap index locking
– Is the segment an IOT? If so, it’s simple row-level
locking
– On insert of duplicate, uncommitted PK or UK
– Very rarely, freelist contention (no longer
relevant if you’re using ASSM)
 Monitoring Enqueues
• V$LOCK
– List of current enqueues, as well as sessions holding and
waiting on enqueues
– Shows TYPE of enqueue, mode held, mode waited, as well
as ID1 and ID2 that help interpret information about the
enqueue
• V$SESSION_WAIT
– Can be used to quickly identify waiting session
• V$SESSION
– Starting with 10g, V$SESSION has extended information,
including:
• Wait information from V$SESSION_WAIT
• And especially, BLOCKING_INSTANCE and BLOCKING_SESSION
 Monitoring Enqueues (p. 2)
• If you’re still not on at least 10g, there are
couple of other options
– catblock.sql, available
in ?/rdbms/admin/catblock.sql will create
DBA_BLOCKERS, DBA_WAITERS, etc
• As of 10g, still distributed, but, appears to be out of
date?
– Steve Adams’ locking scripts, available on his
website, http://www.ixora.com.au/
 Monitoring Enqueues (p. 3)
• Looking at V$LOCK, the TYPE column identifies
the type of enqueue, i.e., TM, TX, UL, etc
• ID1 and ID2 may carry additional information, but
are context-sensitive with respect to the
enqueue TYPE
• For TM enqueue, ID1 is the OBJECT_ID of the
object being locked, which can be referenced in
DBA_OBJECTS, and ID2 is always 0
• For TX Enqueue, ID1 and ID2 hold the undo
segment number, slot number, and wrap.
 Monitoring Enqueues (p. 4)
• For TX enqueue, ID1 and ID2 must be decoded
using this formula:
– trunc(id1/power(2,16)) USN
– bitand(id1,to_number('ffff','xxxx'))+0 SLOT
– id2 SEQ/WRAP
 Row-level Locking
• The first DML in a session where a transaction does not
already exist will implicitly create a transaction.
– An undo segment number, slot, and wrap will be assigned
– TX enqueue (state object) will be instantiated
• When a row to be modified is identified, session will
take an entry in the ITL of the data block, assign it to
the transaction
– USN/SLOT/WRAP will be written to ITL slot, reserving that
slot for the current transaction
– Lock will be taken on the row, by setting the lock byte in
the row directory to point to the current transaction’s ITL
slot
 Demo Time!
• Row locking demo
• If time, do more demos
 Questions?
• Comments?
• Criticisms?
 More Information
• Oracle Documentation
– http://tahiti.oracle.com/
• Oracle MetaLink
– http://metalink.oracle.com/
• OakTable Website
– http://oaktable.net/
• Jonathan Lewis
– http://jonathanlewis.wordpress.com/
– http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/
• Steve Adam’s Website
– http://www.ixora.com.au/
• Tom Kyte’s AskTom
– http://asktom.oracle.com/