Monitor Running Processes in SQL Server 2005/2008

You often need to monitor the processes running on the server in order to improve the performance, by tuning them.  A common option is to make use of a profiler. But in SQL Server versions starting 2005, we can also use dynamic management views.

select
    source_code,stats.total_elapsed_time/1000000 as seconds,last_execution_time
from sys.dm_exec_query_stats as stats
    cross apply(SELECT text as source_code FROM sys.dm_exec_sql_text(sql_handle))AS query_text
order by total_elapsed_time desc

The above code will list out the queries based on the descending order of the time they take

The sys.dm_exec_query_stats is a Dynamic Management view that gives the statistical
information's about cached data. The sys.dm_exec_sql_text is the another view that
gives actual text of the sql_handle which is in binary format. It converts the binary
to actual characters

You can also make use of an article from the Microsoft available at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191511.aspx

Further Reading:

Dynamic Management Views (DMV) for SQL Server Performance and Tuning
Important DMVs to monitor CPU – SQL Server

About The Author

Madhivanan,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai-India, works as a works as a Lead Subject Matter Expert at a company that simplifies BIG data. He started his career as a developer working with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years went by, he started working more on writing queries in SQL Server. He now has good level of knowledge in SQLServer, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. He is also one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. His T-sql blog is at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan