C H A P T E R 4
Locks and Latches
I would have included pins and mutexes in the title, but that would have made it too long and lose the alliteration. Oracle uses all four mechanisms to ensure that resources don’t get damaged by conflicting requirements for access and modification. The mechanisms may slow down the rate at which you are allowed to work, to ensure that you can work safely, although, as we shall see in Chapter 7, some of the mechanisms can save you time when you keep repeating the same piece of work.
There are two significant differences between locks and latches. Locks and pins adopt a polite, queue-like strategy with a first-come, first-served approach, while latches and mutexes adopt a pushy strategy where everyone tries to ...
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