NOWAIT error?

I have a cronjob that exports data from the DB and then truncates the tables. This job has worked fine for the past 6 months, but now I am getting the following errors. The export works good, and then BOOM. What exactly is a "nowait" and how can I fix it?
thanks,
Magnus


truncate table ACTIONS;
truncate table APP_TICKER;
truncate table CUST_DATA;
truncate table INVESTMENT_PLANNER;
truncate table ACTIONS
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified


truncate table CUST_DATA
*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified

shamrock% oerr ORA 00054
00054, 00000, "resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified"
// *Cause: Resource interested is busy
// *Action: Retry if necessary

That means that someone has snuck in and started modifying data in your table. Whenever somebody has any type of write lock, you can't truncate.

The way to fix it is to check for users with a lock on these tables and kill the sessions. This may or may not be appropriate for your environment, however!

D.

So the tables are being written to as my cronjob attempts to truncate the tables?

yes, jeff has correctly determined the source of your trouble; there is a write lock of some sort on the table. It could be DDL but more than likely is DML (e.g. update, insert, delete, or select for update).
D.

what query do I need to run to see what session has locks on those tables?

do I just query the v$session table?

TOAD helped me out and I found the Locked sessions.
How can I research why it was locked tho?

- Magnus

I think you have to query v$lock, v$locked_object