Techniques are disclosed relating to lock wait tracing. A computer system may operate a database that includes a lockable object. The computer may maintain a lock wait queue that stores an indication of processes waiting to acquire a lock on the lockable object. The computer system may store trace records for those processes that, upon releasing a respective lock on the lockable object when another process is waiting in the lock wait queue, have been in contention for the respective lock for over a threshold amount of time. The computer system may present ones of the trace records that identify a timeline that is usable to determine a set of processes that contributed to a delay in a process acquiring a lock on the lockable object.