The drawback to locking the table before doing the DDL is that any other user wanting to do DML will be queueing behind your lock request. So in busy systems this is likely to increase the probability that someone will block you in the moments between the implicit commit and the start of the DDL. Regards Jonathan Lewis http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/faq/ind_faq.html The Co-operative Oracle Users' FAQ http://www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk/seminar.html Optimising Oracle Seminar - schedule updated May 1st ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Kurtz" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 10:59 PM Subject: RE: Script to overcome ORA-54 during DDL I've used something like this in the past, except I also exclusively lock the table to which I am trying to apply the DDL. The idea being that I wait to get the exclusive lock, and having got the exclusive lock the DDL can acquire the lock in nowait mode. Its not perfect, but I find I need less attempts to get the DDL to execute. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------