Question

I have been working with some deadlocks situations in our application recently and have a new case which seems odd to me. The error log displays this (without execution stacks which doesn’t matter at this time I believe):

deadlock-list
  deadlock victim=process84db88
   process-list
    process id=process84db88 taskpriority=0 logused=0 waitresource=KEY: 11:72057594409844736 (8194443284a0) waittime=4685 ownerId=3632385974 transactionname=SELECT lasttranstarted=2011-12-07T16:21:16.287 XDES=0x32f68fca0 lockMode=S schedulerid=6 kpid=6392 status=suspended spid=93 sbid=0 ecid=0 priority=0 trancount=0 lastbatchstarted=2011-12-07T16:21:16.287 lastbatchcompleted=2011-12-07T16:21:16.287 clientapp=.Net SqlClient Data Provider hostname=DE-1809 hostpid=4156 loginname=XXX isolationlevel=read committed (2) xactid=3632385974 currentdb=11 lockTimeout=4294967295 clientoption1=671088672 clientoption2=128056
     executionStack
      ........   
    process id=process47bdc8 taskpriority=0 logused=240604 waitresource=KEY: 11:72057594409844736 (829df5d1e88e) waittime=4681 ownerId=3632397262 transactionname=UPDATE lasttranstarted=2011-12-07T16:21:26.100 XDES=0x2f00b93c0 lockMode=X schedulerid=1 kpid=6568 status=suspended spid=88 sbid=0 ecid=0 priority=0 trancount=2 lastbatchstarted=2011-12-07T16:21:25.640 lastbatchcompleted=2011-12-07T16:21:25.640 clientapp=.Net SqlClient Data Provider hostname=DE-1809 hostpid=4156 loginname=XXX isolationlevel=read committed (2) xactid=3632397262 currentdb=11 lockTimeout=4294967295 clientoption1=673316896 clientoption2=128056
     executionStack
      .........  
   resource-list
    keylock hobtid=72057594409844736 dbid=11 objectname=dbo.OurTable indexname=PK_OurTable id=lock1d9aa0b00 mode=X associatedObjectId=72057594409844736
     owner-list
      owner id=process47bdc8 mode=X
     waiter-list
      waiter id=process84db88 mode=S requestType=wait
    keylock hobtid=72057594409844736 dbid=11 objectname=dbo.OurTable indexname=PK_OurTable id=lock1a56cb580 mode=U associatedObjectId=72057594409844736
     owner-list
      owner id=process84db88 mode=S
     waiter-list
      waiter id=process47bdc8 mode=X requestType=convert

The lock is happening on a key in the same clustered index in one of our tables. What confuses me a little bit is the mode in the last keylock row in the resource-list.

It says: mode=U while the owner in the corresponding owner-list says: mode=S.

How should I read this? These two modes are usually the same. How can these modes differ?

Answer 1

I would interpret that as meaning that process47bdc8 has a U lock on that resource and is waiting to convert that to an X lock but can’t as process84db88 already has an S lock on it.

S locks and U locks are compatible.