It's a standard (indeed, required) best practice of concurrent database
programming across any brand of database to ensure that multi-row
transactions always acquire the locks they use in a predictable order based
on row identities, e.g. for the classic banking debit-credit pair, doing
something like this (Java / JDBC, simplified for brevity and clarity):
PreparedStatement debit = conn.prepareStatement("update account set balance
= balance - ? where acc_no = ? and balance > ?");
debit.setLong(1, amount);
debit.setLong(2, debit_acct);
debit.setLong(3, amount);
PreparedStatement credit = conn.prepareStatement("update account set balance
= balance + ? where acc_no = ?");
credit.setLong(1, amount);
credit.setLong(2, credit_acct);
try {
// always acquire row locks in increasing account number order
conn.beginTransaction();
if (credit_acct < debit_acct) {
credit.executeUpdate();
if (debit.executeUpdate() < 1) throw new SQLException("Insufficient
balance");
}
else {
if (debit.executeUpdate() < 1) throw new SQLException("Insufficient
balance");
credit.executeUpdate();
}
}
catch (SQLException e) {
System.err.println("Oops. transaction failed: ", e.getMessage());
conn.rollback();
}
conn.commit();
If you're doing straight SQL bulk updates, then as someone suggested, you
could use an ORDER BY on a subquery, but I don't know if that is a
guarantee, if you're not actually displaying the results then the DB may be
technically allowed to optimize it out from underneath you. The only way to
be sure is a cursor / procedure.
In short, this boils down to learning more about database programming. PG is
performing as it should.
Cheers
Dave
On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:36 AM, Elias Ghanem <e.gha...@acteos.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Actually i guess the problem is related to the way PG uses to aquire lock
> on the rows that will be updated.
> Suppose the update query will affect 5 rows: A, B, C, D and E.
> Apparently the folowing senario is happening:
> 1- Transaction1 locks row A
> 2- Trnasaction2 locks row B
> 3- Transaction1 updates row A
> 4- Tranasaction2 updates row B
> 5- Transaction1 *tries *to acquire lock on row B(and fail because row
> B is still locked by transaction2)
> 6- Transaction2 *tries *to acquire lock on row A(and fail because row
> A is still locked by transaction1)
> Hence the dead lock.
> Is this a plausible explanation of what is going on?
> If yes, what can be done to avoid the dead lock?
> Thanks again.
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Dead lock Date: Mon, 14 Jun
> 2010 14:50:43 +0300 From: Elias Ghanem
> <e.gha...@acteos.com><e.gha...@acteos.com> To:
> pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
>
> Hi all,
> I have 2 data bases trying to perform an update query at the same time on a
> same table in a third data base using db link.
> I'm getting a dead lock exception:
> ERROR: deadlock detected
> DETAIL: Process 27305 waits for ShareLock on transaction 55575; blocked by
> process 27304.
> Process 27304 waits for ShareLock on transaction 55576; blocked by process
> 27305.
> HINT: See server log for query details.
> Actually the folowing function is installed on 2 dbs DB1 and DB2. This
> function issues an update query on DB3.
> When this function is running simultaneously on DB1 and DB2, it produces a
> dead lock making one of the functions (in DB1 or DB2) stop with the above
> exception:
> Is it normal? should'nt postgres be able to handle such situations, for
> ex: let one transaction wait untill the other commits or rollback then
> continue with the first transaction?
> Is there a parameter that should be set in postgresql.conf to allow
> handling of concurrent transaction...?
>
> CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION TEST_DB_LINK(VARCHAR)
> RETURNS VOID AS'
> DECLARE
> C INTEGER;
> P ALIAS FOR $1;
> DUMMY VARCHAR;
> BEGIN
> C:= 0;
> LOOP
> EXIT WHEN C > 15;
> C:= C+1;
> SELECT INTO DUMMY DBLINK_EXEC(''CONNECTION_STRING TO DB3', ''UPDATE
> IN_FICHE_PRODUIT SET VALIDE = 1'');
> RAISE NOTICE ''%, %'', C,P;
> END LOOP;
> END;'
> LANGUAGE 'plpgsql';
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
>
