Article ID: 179362
Article Last Modified on 10/16/2003
APPLIES TO
- Microsoft SQL Server 6.0 Standard Edition
- Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Standard Edition
This article was previously published under Q179362
SYMPTOMS
You may run into a deadlock when using the UPDLOCK hint. Consider the following example:
User A starts the following transaction:
BEGIN TRAN SELECT COL1 FROM TAB1(UPDLOCK) WHERE COL1 = 1
Then user B starts another transaction with the same commands (this transaction will be blocked by user A):
BEGIN TRAN SELECT COL1 FROM TAB1(UPDLOCK) WHERE COL1 = 1
Now if user A issues the following UPDATE within the same transaction
UPDATE TAB1 SET COL1 = 0 WHERE COL1 = 1
The following error will occur if there is no index for TAB1:
CAUSE
The same update lock is promoted to a table lock when there is no index for a table. Or, when the UPDATE statement is unrestricted, a previous Update_page lock is promoted to a lock type Ex_table. If another transaction already placed an Ex_intent lock on the same table, the lock escalation cannot succeed and the deadlock is detected.
WORKAROUND
To work around this problem, do either of the following:
- Create an index on TAB1.
-or-
- Add a WHERE clause to the UPDATE statement if you already have an index on the table.
MORE INFORMATION
For more information, see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
169960 : INF: Analyzing and Avoiding Deadlocks in SQL Server
Keywords: kbprb KB179362