Can Oracle's default object lock timeout be changed?

Question

> ALTER PACKAGE blah COMPILE;
(wait about 10 minutes)
> ORA-04021: timeout occurred while waiting to lock object

I understand why I get the timeout error (the package is in use).

Does anyone know if there's a way to change the default 10 minute wait interval? Can this be configured at a database / session / statement level?

Thanks

Answer 1

there is a DDL_LOCK_TIMEOUT parameter since 11gR1 :

DDL_LOCK_TIMEOUT specifies a time limit for how long DDL statements will wait in a DML lock queue. The default value of zero indicates a status of NOWAIT. The maximum value of 1,000,000 seconds will result in the DDL statement waiting forever to acquire a DML lock.

I'm not sure you can change the default timeout in the previous releases.