Sharpen your skills at fighting blocking and deadlocks. In this hands-on challenge, you’ll learn how to reproduce a deadlock, read and interpret deadlock graphs (including understanding where the graphical display can be misleading), and design indexes that prevent deadlocks from occurring. You’ll work with scripts to reproduce the deadlock scenario, analyze the lock contention, and explore multiple strategies for defusing the deadlock using index design.

You are equipped with scripts and a video showing you how to reproduce a deadlock, plus a copy of the deadlock graph.

Your challenge: design an index that prevents the deadlock from happening when the repro steps are run againAfter you’re done working on preventing the deadlock, watch the videos showing how I strategized the solutions, and indexes I tested that prevent the deadlock (you get these, too, in the solution script).

Worried you’ll get stuck?

Getting stuck is totally OK - it’s the struggle that gets you there in the end!

If you get totally frustrated, go ahead and watch the solution videos. Then set yourself a reminder to retake the challenge in one week’s time. Running through the challenge again will lock in the learning.