Deadlock

How it is used

Databases detect deadlocks automatically and roll back one transaction, called the deadlock victim, with an error. Applications should catch this error and retry. Accessing tables and rows in the same order in all code paths reduces deadlocks.

Example sentences

1. Two jobs update the same accounts in a different order, which causes a deadlock every few hours.

2. The transaction was chosen as the deadlock victim and rolled back.

Common collocations

• deadlock victim
• detect a deadlock
• deadlock graph
• retry on deadlock

Related terms

• lockA mark the database places on a row, page or table so that other transactions cannot change it, or sometimes read it, until the current transaction ends.
• transactionA group of database operations that are treated as one unit: either all of them succeed together or none of them is applied.
• rollbackThe act of cancelling a transaction so that all of its changes are undone and the data returns to how it was before the transaction began.
• isolation levelA setting that controls how much one transaction can see of other transactions' changes, trading data safety against speed and concurrency.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• deadlock · Software Engineering
• deadlock · International Relations & Diplomacy

More terms: Transactions and Concurrency

• commit
• ACID