Syntax options: CARRY OVER LOCKS ARE ENABLED | CARRY OVER LOCKS ARE DISABLED Enables or disables carry-over lock optimization. Carry-over locks are enabled by default. While attached to the database, a process can have some active locks (locks attached to the database) and some carry-over locks (locks requested in earlier transactions that have not been demoted). If a transaction needs a lock it has currently marked as carry-over, it can reuse the lock by changing it to an active lock. The same lock can go from active to carry-over to active multiple times without paying the cost of lock request and demotion. This substantially reduces the number of lock requests if a process accesses the same areas repeatedly. As part of the carry-over lock optimization, a NOWAIT transaction requests, acquires, and holds a NOWAIT lock. This signals other processes accessing the database that a NOWAIT transaction exists and causes Oracle Rdb to release all carry-over locks. If NOWAIT transactions are noticeably slow when executing, you can specify CARRY OVER LOCKS ARE DISABLED with the ALTER DATABASE or CREATE DATABASE statement. This feature is available as an online database modification.