How to check which locks are held on a table

Question

How can we check which database locks are applied on which rows against a query batch? Any tool that highlights table row level locking in real time?

DB: SQL Server 2005

Answer 1

This is not exactly showing you which rows are locked, but this may helpful to you.

You can check which statements are blocked by running this:

select cmd,* from sys.sysprocesses
where blocked > 0

It will also tell you what each block is waiting on. So you can trace that all the way up to see which statement caused the first block that caused the other blocks.

Answer 2

You can also use the built-in sp_who2 stored procedure to get current blocked and blocking processes on a SQL Server instance. Typically you'd run this alongside a SQL Profiler instance to find a blocking process and look at the most recent command that spid issued in profiler.

Answer 3

To add to the other responses, sp_lock can also be used to dump full lock information on all running processes. The output can be overwhelming, but if you want to know exactly what is locked, it's a valuable one to run. I usually use it along with sp_who2 to quickly zero in on locking problems.

There are multiple different versions of "friendlier" sp_lock procedures available online, depending on the version of SQL Server in question.

In your case, for SQL Server 2005, sp_lock is still available, but deprecated, so it's now recommended to use the sys.dm_tran_locks view for this kind of thing. You can find an example of how to "roll your own" sp_lock function here.

Answer 4

With SQL Server 2005 and above use the following dynamic management view (Transact-SQL) to find out processes which are locking a table:

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_tran_locks WHERE ...

It returns information about currently active lock manager resources. Each row represents a currently active request to the lock manager for a lock that has been granted or is waiting to be granted.

Reference: MSDN

Answer 5

I use a Dynamic Management View (DMV) to capture locks as well as the object_id or partition_id of the item that is locked.

(MUST switch to the Database you want to observe to get object_id)

SELECT
t1.resource_type,
t1.resource_database_id,
t1.resource_associated_entity_id,
t1.request_mode,
t1.request_session_id,
t2.blocking_session_id,
o1.name 'object name',
o1.type_desc 'object descr',
p1.partition_id 'partition id',
p1.rows 'partition/page rows',
a1.type_desc 'index descr',
a1.container_id 'index/page container_id'
FROM sys.dm_tran_locks as t1
INNER JOIN sys.dm_os_waiting_tasks as t2
 ON t1.lock_owner_address = t2.resource_address
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.objects o1 on o1.object_id = t1.resource_associated_entity_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.partitions p1 on p1.hobt_id = t1.resource_associated_entity_id
LEFT OUTER JOIN sys.allocation_units a1 on a1.allocation_unit_id = t1.resource_associated_entity_id