Oracle 10.1.0.3.0
Whenever we see row-level contention, or even today when a table lock caused contention for incoming DML, we see a huge spike in CPU activity (and then our web applications which don't even use these tables start sending timout msgs to our admin).

Why does Oracle penalize the entire system for contention between 2 users, and is this happening because of some configuration we've unknowingly set?

Thanks,
Chuck