5.0 SP2 - Security deadlock

[Former Member]

Question:

What might have caused a deadlock?

Details:

After clicking "apply" while modifying a member access profile, we received an error:

EvErr: UserManageTx.ParseAcsTable; Transaction (Process ID 71) was deadlocked on lock resources with another process...

We've never received this before. There was only one person in the admin console---no one else was playing with security or admin. What might have caused a deadlock?

Thanks...

[Former Member]

A dead lock occurs when two processes are attempting to update the same data and both processes are holding each other up. Normally SQL will hold the locks for a while and then kill one of the processes (normally the last process to start) and report it as aborting due a dead lock. For the process you're describing, either someone else would have had to be in the administration console process security or a previous transaction was interrupted and did not complete and left a lock open as part of the transaction.

You didn't say if you were able to successfully process again and get through the process. If so, the killing of your transaction may have caused the other lock to release (assuming it was an open lock and not someone else processing security). If you are still not able to process, stop and restart the SQL Server service either through service manager or SQL management studio. If there are any incomplete transactions, they will rollback when the services restart and that will clear the lock.