Re: Wait for lock?

"dan wright" <dw420_at_nospammepleezeairmail.net> wrote in message news:A3D4FED550018CB5.B318B10D7607976E.F30CC76EE892BEF0_at_lp.airnews.net...
> Interesting that I got a much greater response from the Informix
> newsfroup about using Oracle after heavy use of Informix than I did from
> the Oracle newsfroup.
>
>
> Anyway - apparently Oracle has no equivalent to Informix's ability to
> specify a timeout period when waiting for a lock. Is this correct?

oracle allows you to create stored procedures to handle transactions.

> You can either tell Oracle to wait forever, or to not wait at all.

yes, you can specify FOR UPDATE NOWAIT to tell Oracle not to wait for a lock, and instead raise an exception if a lock is not obtained.

> So, if I expect the possibility of contention on a database table, but
> setting isolation to dirty read is not an option, I can't tell Oracle to
> keep trying for a few seconds?

not directly, no..

> So, what in Informix would be a simple "SET LOCK MODE TO WAIT 5" would
> be implemented by trapping lock exceptions and retrying several times
> before giving up. What a pain....

yes. enclose the statement in an anonymous PL/SQL block, with an exception handler, and enclose the block within a loop with an appropriate exit condition.

> And another thing - just what is the ANSI standard for an outer join? I
> thought both Informix and Oracle were ANSI-compliant, but the syntax for
> outer joins doesn't seem similar at all (At least in Informix it's
> simple and obvious).....
> (Incidentally Sybase has a really screwed up syntax for outer joins as
> well)

ansi shmansi. vendors differentiate their products. deal with it.

> Thanks for any input
>
>
Received on Fri Sep 15 2000 - 22:17:07 CDT