RE: Is it possible to use nolock type of hint in query

Morning all,

> "Igor Neyman" <ineyman_at_perceptron.com> 08/11/06 08:50pm >>>
> Shouldn't SELECT... FOR UPDATE be used in this case (and not "dirty"
> reads)?

<BEGIN RANT>

Am I the only DBA in the entire world who disagrees with the use of SELECT ... FOR UPDATE ? To me, this statement is a sure sign of 'lazy developer syndrome' - and having been a developer, don't think I'm having a go at developers in general. (Well, Java developers deserve everything they get, but the rest are ok <GD&R>)

What's wrong with writing correct 'error' handling to get around the fact that some other session has updated your data in the time between your session reading it and then trying to write back the amendments ?

Dave Ensor's book about Oracle Design has a good chapter on this very subject, which basically boils down to 'lock late and lock for a short time only'. SELECT ... FOR UPDATE is a 'lock early and lock for as long as possible' technique.

The number of problems I have to deal with in applications I have supported (and support) which have enqueue problems caused by this very statement is a nightmare. I'm afraid that even Oracle are causing me grief at the moment - in Spatial systems, they have fixed a bug by adding FOR UPDATE to the end of a select from MDSYS.SDO_INDEX_METATDATA_TABLE - unfortunately, one of our systems (web based, Java code, etc etc) takes longer than zero time to do its transaction(s) and locks out other users.

<END RANT>

Cheers,
Norman.

Norman Dunbar.
Contract Oracle DBA.
Rivers House, Leeds.

Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

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