How One Engineer Reduced Database Deadlocks by 95 Percent
from The Software Engineering Podcast with Fexingo: Code, Architecture, and Engineering Best Practices Hosted by Fexingo
In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into the story of a senior backend engineer at a mid-sized fintech company who systematically reduced database deadlocks by 95 percent. They break down the root cause—a combination of implicit table locks and poorly ordered transactions—and walk through the specific fix: introducing explicit row-level locking, reordering SQL statements to follow a consistent lock hierarchy, and adding retry logic with exponential backoff. The hosts discuss real-world numbers, like how the change cut p99 latency from 800ms to 120ms and eliminated a daily wave of timeout errors that had plagued the payments team for months. They also touch on how the same pattern applies to any application using relational databases under high concurrency, from e-commerce carts to booking systems. If you've ever fought with deadlocks in production, this episode gives you a concrete playbook—not just theory. No fluff, just the actual engineering decisions that turned a nightmare into a solved problem. #DatabaseDeadlocks #PostgreSQL #FintechEngineering #SQLPerformance #RowLevelLocking #TransactionOrdering #RetryLogic #ExponentialBackoff #BackendEngineering #PaymentSystems #HighConcurrency #LatencyOptimization #ProductionDebugging #SoftwareEngineering #Technology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #TheSoftwareEngineeringPodcast Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo
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