Con­trol­ling Lock Du­ra­tion in the DBMS

Some data­bas­es, like Or­a­cle in par­tic­u­lar, don't seem to al­low you to set the max­i­mum du­ra­tion for trans­ac­tions (hence locks). This im­plies that some ap­pli­ca­tions (those that don't be­have well) can be hold­ing long-lived locks on your data. The re­sult is that some data may be­come un­avail­able (even for days in one par­tic­u­lar case I have seen!!!).

The so­lu­tion? I am not sure about oth­er prod­ucts, but the Atomikos trans­ac­tion li­braries make sure that none of your ap­pli­ca­tions can hold locks longer than the con­fig­ured XA trans­ac­tion time­out. Mean­ing: you get the ben­e­fit of en­sured con­trol and avail­abil­i­ty of your data. It's iron­ic re­al­ly; many peo­ple be­lieve that XA can block your data but as this case shows it is ex­act­ly the op­po­site!