Surabhi Ahuja wrote:

BEGIN
        patKey := $4;
        select patient_id into patId from patient where patient_key = patKey;
        if not found
        THEN
                insert into 
patient(patient_name,org_pat_id,birth_date,patient_key) 
values($1,trim($2),$3,$4);

The output that i am getting (on executing it on a dual processor machine) is 
as follows:

Status is : PGRES_FATAL_ERROR
Result message : ERROR:  duplicate key violates unique constraint 
"patient_patient_key_key"
CONTEXT:  SQL statement "insert into 
patient(patient_name,org_pat_id,birth_date,patient_key) values( $1 ,trim( $2 ), $3 , 
$4
 )"

Please check the block in red. Why is it happening? insnt the call to the 
stored procedure considered one atomic operation?
Please tell me what is going wrong?

(For those viewing in plain-text, the red block is the "duplicate pkey" error)

Cant I avoid such red blocks? and get messages like the ones obained from the 
other threads
I can impose locks but would not that lower down the performance?
Please suggest other solutions

There is no free solution to the problem of concurrent updates to the same resource. You have two options: 1. Optimistically try the insert and if you get an error catch it and issue the update instead. 2. Lock the resource for the duration of your update and deal with the fact that some updates might time-out/fail to get the lock and need to be retried. 3. Don't actually have a shared resource (e.g. use auto-generated sequence values for meaningless ID numbers).

In a nutshell, those are the options available to you, but I would recommend getting a good technical book on concurrency and spending a couple of days with it.

In your example, I'm a little confused as to what your primary key is (patient_id or patient_key) and what purpose the other column serves.

--
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd

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