Deadlock Prevention

Overview

When two processes wait for each other forever, you have a deadlock.

Deadlocks are permanent freezes—no crash, no error, just silence. They occur when processes hold resources while waiting for resources held by others, creating circular wait.

When to Use

• Acquiring multiple locks or resources
• Nested transactions across tables/services
• Distributed systems with cross-service calls
• "System freezes under load"
• No errors but operations never complete

The Iron Rule