The rwlock_instances Table
The rwlock_instances table lists all the rwlock instances (read write locks) seen by the Performance Schema while the server executes. An rwlock is a synchronization mechanism used in the code to enforce that threads at a given time can have access to some common resource following certain rules. The resource is said to be "protected" by the rwlock. The access is either shared (many threads can have a read lock at the same time) or exclusive (only one thread can have a write lock at a given time).
Depending on how many threads are requesting a lock, and the nature of the locks requested, access can be either granted in shared mode, granted in exclusive mode, or not granted at all, waiting for other threads to finish first.
The rwlock_instances table has these columns:
NAMEThe instrument name associated with the lock.
OBJECT_INSTANCE_BEGINThe address in memory of the lock that was instrumented.
WRITE_LOCKED_BY_THREAD_IDWhen a thread currently has an
rwlocklocked in exclusive (write) mode,WRITE_LOCKED_BY_THREAD_IDis theTHREAD_IDof the locking thread, otherwise it isNULL.READ_LOCKED_BY_COUNTWhen a thread currently has an
rwlocklocked in shared (read) mode,READ_LOCKED_BY_COUNTis incremented by 1. This is a counter only, so it cannot be used directly to find which thread holds a read lock, but it can be used to see whether there is a read contention on anrwlock, and see how many readers are currently active.
By performing queries on both of the following tables, a monitoring application or a DBA may detect some bottlenecks or deadlocks between threads that involve locks:
events_waits_current, to see whatrwlocka thread is waiting forrwlock_instances, to see which other thread currently owns anrwlock
There is a limitation: The rwlock_instances can be used only to identify the thread holding a write lock, but not the threads holding a read lock.