Deadlocks – Analysing, Preventing and Mitigating by Erland Sommarskog

Session Title: Deadlocks – Analysing, Preventing and Mitigating
Speaker(s): Erland Sommarskog

Abstract: Deadlocks happens in the best of families, and an occasional deadlock is nothing to be alarmed of. But too many deadlocks can hamper throughput or be irritating for the users who encounter them, and in this case you need to investigate the deadlocks to see how you can reduce the pain.
I start this session with discussing how you can get information about deadlocks. Next, I will go through the XML report for a deadlock and highlight things you should pay attention to. I the second half of the session, I will discuss various devices you can apply to prevent deadlocks. I will also discuss possible mitigations for deadlocks that are too difficult to prevent entirely.

The topic of deadlocks is a complex one, so don’t expect to learn everything, but the hope is that this session will open your eyes for things to look out for, next time you have to analyse a deadlock.

This is a level 300/400 session for developers and DBAs who need to perform troubleshooting in production systems. The session assumes that you have a basic understanding of locking in SQL Server.