Re: App very unresponsive while performing simple update

[Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to>]

On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 01:23:07 -0500,
  "Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 28, 2006 at 07:20:59PM -0400, Greg Stark wrote:
> > Brendan Duddridge <brendan(at)clickspace(dot)com> writes:
> > More likely you were blocking on some lock. Until that other query holding
> > that lock tries to commit Postgres won't actually detect a deadlock, it'll
> > just sit waiting until the lock becomes available.
> 
> Wow, are you sure that's how it works? I would think it would be able to
> detect deadlocks as soon as both processes are waiting on each other's
> locks.

I don't see how it could wait for a commit. If a command is blocked waiting for
a lock, how are you going to get a commit (you might get a rollback if the
query is aborted)?