Are recent versions of Oracle able to implement a queue with SKIP LOCKED?

My question: what is the very latest status on whether or not recent versions of Oracle actually make it possible to implement a queue in a straightforward way with SKIP LOCKED and limiting to a single row, without resorting to indirect solutions/fragile solutions? There seems to be alot of history going back a long time showing SKIP LOCKED queueing being problematic with Oracle - I'm trying to determine if newest Oracle's have cleared these problems up. I have implemented queue style functionality using Postgres with SKIP LOCKED, and I now wish to do the same with Oracle. I'm happy to use any Oracle version that makes it possible. So before I head down the path of trying to implement this for Oracle, I wanted to first ask if it is impossible to do so. I've been reading alot of documentation on the web to try to determine if it can be done ... older information seems to indicate that Oracle is not able to truly limit results returned to only one single row, which is a big problem when using "SKIP LOCKED" in a queue because for queue processing you want only one row. Previous information indicating row limit in Oracle depends on fragile/indirect solutions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16299663/select-for-update-skip-locked-with-row-limit https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6117254/force-oracle-to-return-top-n-rows-with-skip-locked https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54766489/oracle-how-to-limit-number-of-rows-in-select-for-update-skip-locked https://stackoverflow.com/questions/470542/how-do-i-limit-the-number-of-rows-returned-by-an-oracle-query-after-ordering https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50390146/query-limit-in-oracle-database There appears to be a recent FETCH statement implemented in recent Oracle versions, but again it is not clear if this truly restricts access to a single row. Does FETCH make it possible to implement a queue with SKIP LOCKED in a direct and robust manner? Please note I am aware Oracle has Advanced Queue functionality built in - I do not want to use that. Here's what I wrote for Postgres - it's pretty straightforward - note I am aware it lacks needed transaction handling: import psycopg2 import psycopg2.extras import random db_params = { 'database': 'jobs', 'user': 'jobsuser', 'password': 'superSecret', 'host': '127.0.0.1', 'port': '5432', } conn = psycopg2.connect(**db_params) cur = conn.cursor(cursor_factory=psycopg2.extras.DictCursor) def do_some_work(job_data): if random.choice([True, False]): print('do_some_work FAILED') raise Exception else: print('do_some_work SUCCESS') def process_job(): sql = """DELETE FROM message_queue WHERE id = ( SELECT id FROM message_queue WHERE status = 'new' ORDER BY created ASC FOR UPDATE SKIP LOCKED LIMIT 1 ) RETURNING *; """ cur.execute(sql) queue_item = cur.fetchone() print('message_queue says to process job id: ', queue_item['target_id']) sql = """SELECT * FROM jobs WHERE id =%s AND status='new_waiting' AND attempts <= 3 FOR UPDATE;""" cur.execute(sql, (queue_item['target_id'],)) job_data = cur.fetchone() if job_data: try: do_some_work(job_data) sql = """UPDATE jobs SET status = 'complete' WHERE id =%s;""" cur.execute(sql, (queue_item['target_id'],)) except Exception as e: sql = """UPDATE jobs SET status = 'failed', attempts = attempts + 1 WHERE id =%s;""" # if we want the job to run again, insert a new item to the message queue with this job id cur.execute(sql, (queue_item['target_id'],)) else: print('no job found, did not get job id: ', queue_item['target_id']) conn.commit() process_job() cur.close() conn.close()