database_name | database_id | 0

Is the name or ID of the database for which to display the oldest transaction information. If not specified, or if 0 is specified, the current database is used. Database names must comply with the rules for identifiers.

WITH

Enables options to be specified.

TABLERESULTS

Specifies the results in a tabular format that can be loaded into a table. Use this option to create a table of results that can be inserted into a table for comparisons. When this option is not specified, results are formatted for readability.

NO_INFOMSGS

Suppresses all informational messages.

DBCC OPENTRAN returns the following result set when there are no open transactions:

No active open transactions.

DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.

Use DBCC OPENTRAN to determine whether an open transaction exists within the transaction log. When you use the BACKUP LOG statement, only the inactive part of the log can be truncated; an open transaction can prevent the log from truncating completely. To identify an open transaction, use sp_who to obtain the system process ID.

Requires membership in the sysadmin fixed server role or the db_owner fixed database role.

A. Returning the oldest active transaction

The following example obtains transaction information for the current database. Results may vary.

CREATE TABLE T1(Col1 int, Col2 char(3));
GO
BEGIN TRAN
INSERT INTO T1 VALUES (101, 'abc');
GO
DBCC OPENTRAN;
ROLLBACK TRAN;
GO
DROP TABLE T1;
GO

Here is the result set.

Transaction information for database 'master'.

Oldest active transaction:

SPID (server process ID) : 52

UID (user ID) : -1

Name          : user_transaction

LSN           : (518:1576:1)

Start time    : Jun 1 2004 3:30:07:197PM

SID           : 0x010500000000000515000000a065cf7e784b9b5fe77c87709e611500

DBCC execution completed. If DBCC printed error messages, contact your system administrator.

Note:
The "UID (user ID)" result is meaningless and will be removed in a future version of SQL Server.

B. Specifying the WITH TABLERESULTS option

-- Create the temporary table to accept the results.
CREATE TABLE #OpenTranStatus (
   ActiveTransaction varchar(25),
   Details sql_variant 
   )
-- Execute the command, putting the results in the table.
INSERT INTO #OpenTranStatus 
   EXEC ('DBCC OPENTRAN WITH TABLERESULTS, NO_INFOMSGS');

-- Display the results.
SELECT * FROM #OpenTranStatus;
GO

Reference

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