Sql – ORA-00054: resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified

You can write a procedure with the FOR UPDATE NOWAIT and return an error message when the row is locked:

SQL> CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE do_something(p_id NUMBER) IS
  2     row_locked EXCEPTION;
  3     PRAGMA EXCEPTION_INIT(row_locked, -54);
  4  BEGIN
  5     FOR cc IN (SELECT *
  6                  FROM some_table
  7                 WHERE ID = p_id FOR UPDATE NOWAIT) LOOP
  8        -- proceed with what you want to do;
  9        NULL;
 10     END LOOP;
 11  EXCEPTION
 12     WHEN row_locked THEN
 13        raise_application_error(-20001, 'this row is locked...');
 14  END do_something;
 15  /

Procedure created

Now let's build a small example with two sessions:

session_1> select id from some_table where id = 1 for update;

        ID
----------
         1

session_2> exec do_something(1);

begin do_something(1); end;

ORA-20001: this row is locked...
ORA-06512: at "VNZ.DO_SOMETHING", line 11
ORA-06512: at line 2

session_1> commit;

Commit complete

session_2> exec do_something(1);

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed

Your table is already locked by some query. For example, you may have executed "select for update" and have not yet committed/rollbacked and fired another select query. Do a commit/rollback before executing your query.