Locks on Bitmap Indexes

Hi,

I´m a developer of a database aplication on oracle 8. In several tables I use bitmap indexes to increase performance. To prevent users from waiting on each other I check rows being updated if they are locked by another user. For higher level of locking I use the dbms_lock package. Everything works fine so far. I can prevent most conflicts with row locks.
My problem know is that some tables use bitmap indexes. If I update any bitmapped indexed column in a table oracle locks the index-key and I cannot make inserts on that table with the same key-value until the user who updates make a commit. As I know this is because of the bitmapped index. My question now is:

Is there a way to check if a key-value of a specific bitmap index is locked by another user ?
Does anybody know a package or a V$ ??? table who gives information about that ?

Thanx

Stephan Voigt Received on Thu Nov 19 1998 - 17:30:19 CST