Enqueue – PK, FK or Bitmap Index problem?

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If one is seeing waits for enq: TX – row lock contention  then there could be a lot of reasons. One distinguishing factor is the lock mode. If the lock mode is exclusive (mode 6) then it’s most likely a classic row lock where two sessions are trying to modify the same row. On the other hand if the lock mode is share (mode 4)  it’s typically going to be

• Primary/Unique Key: inserting a unique key when  someone else has already inserted that key but not committed
• Foreign Key: Inserting a foreign when then parent value has been inserted but not committed or deleted and not commited (not to be confused with locks due to un-indexed foreign key which cause a “enq: TM – contention”  wait not a TX wait)
• Bitmap Index: bitmap index chunk contention

Now how to tell which of these is happening? Well here is a query on ASH (I’ve commented out some of the useful fields to limit the output)  that will generate output to help us distinguish between the 3 different cases

col object for A15
col otype for A10
select
       substr(event,0,20)    lock_name,
       --ash.session_id        waiter,
       --mod(ash.p1,16)        lmode,
       --ash.p2                p2,
       --ash.p3                p3,
       o.object_name           object,
       o.object_type           otype,
       CURRENT_FILE#           filen,
       CURRENT_BLOCK#          blockn,
       --ash.SQL_ID            waiting_sql,
       BLOCKING_SESSION        blocker
       --,ash.xid
from
         v$active_session_history ash,
         all_objects o
where
           event like 'enq: TX%'
   and   mod(ash.p1,16)=4
   and o.object_id (+)= ash.CURRENT_OBJ#
/

Here is the output from the 3 different cases

Unique Index

  OBJECT   OTYPE FILEN BLOCKN BLOCKER
  ------  ------ ----- ------ -------
      -1             0      0     158
      -1             0      0     158
      -1             0      0     158
      -1             0      0     158

Foreign Key

  OBJECT   OTYPE FILEN BLOCKN BLOCKER
  ------  ------ ----- ------ -------
   CHILD   TABLE     1  60954       1
   CHILD   TABLE     1  60954       1
   CHILD   TABLE     1  60954       1

Bitmap Index

  OBJECT   OTYPE FILEN BLOCKN BLOCKER
  ------  ------ ----- ------ -------
      I1   INDEX     0      0     144
      I1   INDEX     0      0     144
      I1   INDEX     0      0     144
      I1   INDEX     0      0     144

Each case has a different footprint.

• Unique key index issue object of “-1″
• Foreign key case has a blocker of “1″
• Bitmap index case as filen and blockn “0″

These cases were run on 10.2.0.3 thus the “footprint” could change on other versions.

The above ASH query and many other useful ASH queries are maintained on GitHub at

https://github.com/khailey/ashmasters