RE: does oracle use block level locking with RAC?

There are locks and then there are locks.  

Your right Oracle locks ROWs not blocks. However, when in RAC only one instance "owns" the block at a given time. I forget all the techno garble to describe the mechanism right now but when another instance wants to change a block it requests to be the owner of that block if it isn't at the time the change is being made. So it sure seems like a lock because you can't access the block until you own it. But it's not a lock in the sense that most of us think of a lock. Is that confusing enough? :-)  

Ric Van Dyke

Hotsos Enterprises

Hotsos Symposium 2009 dedicated to performance and nothing but performance

March 8 - 12, 2009 in Dallas, Texas

Be there.

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Rick Ricky Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 2:39 PM
To: oracle-l_at_freelists.org
Subject: does oracle use block level locking with RAC?  

I saw on a board somewhere that someone is having deadlock issues due to block level locking with Oracle RAC? I thought Oracle always did row level locking on everything? Could this be a mis-perception with something else?

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l