FAQ: What are Latches and What Causes Latch Contention (11g and Above) (Doc ID 1970450.1)

Last updated on MARCH 03, 2022

Applies to:

Oracle Database Cloud Schema Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service - Version N/A and later
Gen 1 Exadata Cloud at Customer (Oracle Exadata Database Cloud Machine) - Version N/A and later
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure - Database Service - Version N/A and later
Oracle Database Backup Service - Version N/A and later
Information in this document applies to any platform.

Purpose

A number of different locking mechanisms are used to protect data from concurrent access including latches, enqueues, distributed locks and global locks (used in RAC).

This bulletin focuses on latches and aims to provide a clear understanding of how latches are implemented and the causes of latch contention. The information provided can be used in tuning the various kinds of latches discussed.

Note: It is important to understand that it is neither practical nor possible to provide specific values for the init.ora parameters discussed in this bulletin. The values for these parameters vary from database to database and from platform to platform. Moreover, for the same database and platforms, they may vary from application to application.

For advice on earlier versions, refer to:

<Document 22908.1> FAQ: What are Latches and What Causes Latch Contention (Pre-11g)