oracle db lock issue, commit

This is oracle 10g. If I issue a开发者_如何学Pythonn update on a table from sqlplus but do not commit, then in another session update the same row and try to commit, it just hangs until I commit the first one. I know some would argue it's the locking mechanism but the application we have does the same thing and users are being blocked.

Whats the best way to avoid this issue?

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Instead of just trying the update, you can issue a lock with the NOWAIT option, e.g.

SELECT * FROM mytable
WHERE xxx
FOR UPDATE NOWAIT;

If the row is locked by another user, Oracle will immediately raise ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified.