Permanent OptimisticLockException

Question

Hi,
I'm having some weird problems with an OptimisticLockException on an object. No matter what the application tries to do with this object, toplink throws an OptimisticLockException.
The weird part is, the application catches the exception, and does a refresh on the object before rethrowing it, so I would expect it to be fresh the next time it's written upon.
I can see in the logfile that no other unitOfWork modifies the object in the meantime. But frustratingly the next uow fails with the same OptimisticLockException as before.
The object exists in the database. Restarting the application and thus having brand new cache doesn't change anything.
Unfortunately the culprit object has been deleted by hand in the database so the only evidence I have are the logfiles. But I have a sneaking feeling that if it happened once, it might happen again.
Any ideas how this can happen? Or how do I go about debugging the problem?
by the way, this is a productive environment and SQL logging is turned off for performance reasons.

Answer 1

Hi,
Forget it, it's not a toplink problem. It's the database.
There are apparently some database rows "lost in space". They are there, unless you query them by primary key...
Example 1-n relationship parent ---> child
select * from child_table where parent_id = 4 id name parent_id
1 child1 4
2 child2 4
3 child3 4
select * from child_table where id = 30 rows
No wonder I kept getting an OptimisticLockException when reading all "children" and then trying to modify child3