I’m running into an issue in SQL Server 2005. A stored procedure is run in a PowerBuilder application, which then calls a C# DLL library which runs a different stored procedure.
The first procedure performs some deletes on a table based on the criteria, and the second procedure uses that table as the primary data source in order to insert into a different table. The procedures make use of some of the same joined tables for selecting, but only the one table is being modified.
The problem is this setup sometimes deadlocks, but SQL Server doesn’t do anything about it. There are try / catch statements in the DLL library that would log an error if the procedure it calls was killed due to a deadlock, but instead the library just sits waiting for the procedure to finish. I’ve let it sit for 10 minutes and it’s still deadlocked.
I tried using the DEADLOCK_PRIORITY LOW statement in the second procedure, since it needs to wait for the deletes to finish before it selects. I also tried paring that select statement down to only one table just to test it, and it still hits a deadlock. I also tried using a TRY / CATCH block with a BEGIN TRANSACTION in order to catch deadlocks in both procedures, but that didn’t help either.
Is there a way to force SQL Server to kill a transaction if it’s being blocked? I can handle errors in the DLL, but if SQL Server doesn’t return an error and just sits there, I can’t do anything with it. Thanks!
I would take a look at this article: http://www.sql-server-performance.com/2006/reducing-locks/
It talks about reducing SQL Server locks which may be part of your issue here. I would recommend playing with the lock settings on the table / page (PageLocks on / off) and see if that helps with the situation.
Instead of trying to put a patch on the issue – try to resolve the root cause.