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Watching SQL Execute on Oracle - Part I

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Oracle
Posted Jul 1, 2004

By James Koopmann

Do you have SQL running within your database? Of course you do. This article is the first in a series to
introduce you to a method of finding information about the SQL your users are executing in your
databases.

Your ability as a DBA to detect who is accessing the database and the SQL they are executing is
paramount in your ability to properly manage and give feedback on the type of work your database is
requested to do. This article will begin our series with an introduction to determining who is logged into
your database and what SQL they are executing. This article is not concerning itself with the tuning of
SQL but rather a primer so that you can get familiar with or re-acquainted with the underlying tables
within Oracle that give information on who and what is being done around the SQL.

V$SESSION

The V$SESSION is often the jumping off place to determine who is logged into the database and a high
level overview of what they are doing. In Table 1 I have given a subset of the columns this view
contains. While there are other columns in this view that relate to operating system information and the
application being executed, I am only presenting those columns that give us the basis for our jumping off
point to determine that this is in fact an active user and also the columns we will need later to join to the
actual SQL being executed.

Table 1.
Limited V$SESSION information

Column Description

SADDR Identifies a unique Oracle session address

SID Identifies a unique Oracle session

USERNAME The Oracle user (same as from dba_users)

STATUS Tells us the status of the session. We will be concerned with ACTIVE sessions,
those that are executing SQL

PROCESS This is the operating system process id for the connection. Only given here as a
reference so that you can go look on the O/S side.
 Column Description

TYPE The type of session connected to the database

SQL_ADDRESS Used with SQL_HASH_VALUE to identify the SQL statement that is currently
being executed.

SQL_HASH_VALUE Used with SQL_ADDRESS to identify the SQL statement that is currently being
executed. This SQL_HASH_VALUE is unique, or should be unique, to the same
SQL statement no matter when it is executed. Thus 'select * from dual' will
always produce the same SQL_HASH_VALUE.

In order to extract the information, you can issue a SQL statement such as the following in Listing 1.
This is a very simplistic statement but gives us all the information we need to determine if the user is
actually executing SQL at the time. If a user has SQL that is executing, the status column will be ACTIVE
and the SQL_ADDR & SQL_HASH_VALUE will be populated. I have given the output of two different
executions of this particular SQL against the V$SESSION view. The first shows where a user was
noticed logged into our database but is basically inactive and there is no SQL address or hash value.
The second execution of this SQL shows a user who is actively executing SQL, denoted by the values in
the address and hash value columns.

Listing 1.
Extracting simplistic columns to show sessions that are executing SQL

select sid,
to_char(logon_time,'MMDDYYYY:HH24:MI') logon_time,
username,
type,
status,
process,
sql_address,
sql_hash_value
from v$session
where username is not null

Inactive session with no SQL executing

SID LOGON_TIME USERNAME TYPE STATUS PROCESS SQL_ADDR
SQL_HASH_VALUE
---- -------------- --------- ---- -------- ------------ -------- ------------
--
150 06252004:06:23 JKOOPMANN USER INACTIVE 3528:3036 00
0

Active session with SQL executing

SID LOGON_TIME USERNAME TYPE STATUS PROCESS SQL_ADDR
SQL_HASH_VALUE
---- -------------- --------- ---- -------- ------------ -------- ------------
--
150 06252004:06:23 JKOOPMANN USER ACTIVE 3528:3036 6879D780
2803425422

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