deadlock when altering table w/trigger

we just altered a table with a trigger and received an ORA-04045 and ORA-04020 (deadlock). The table is very busy and receives many inserts/updates. The alter worked correctly, but when the trigger was implicitly recompiled, the deadlock condition occurred. The trigger recompile eventually occurred after about 30 minutes.

My question is why the deadlock occurred and why didn't Oracle handle this condition?

This occurred on Oracle 7.3.3.4.

Curiously, on Oracle 8.0.4, the same deadlock condition occurred, but it looks like Oracle8 is better able to handle the deadlock condition (ie, the inserts received only 1 or 2 deadlock errors and then resumed successfully whereas Oracle7 deadlock on many of the inserts).

I just trying to understand what is happening so that we can plan for future updates.

ron....
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Ron McCamish
rmccamish_at_cas.org Received on Tue Jun 02 1998 - 07:56:45 CDT