skreebydba

Previously, I've blogged about returning formatted estimated_completion_time values from sys.dm_exec_requests and getting sortable output from sp_whoisactive. In this post I combine the two, joining the two result sets together. In my environment, we use Ola Hallengren's Maintenance Solution to run our backups. Because the backup job defaults to run backups for all user databases, it can be difficult to tell which database is currently being backed up.

sp_join_whoisactive_execrequests

This procedure takes the output from sp_whoisactive and joins it to sys.dm_exec_requests on session_id, returning the estimated completion time and current backup statement in a single pass. Here is a sample result set from the procedure (Click to Enlarge):

The sql_command column contains the full command being run, in this example Ola Hallengren's DatabaseBackup procedure. The sql_text column contains the actual SQL statement being run, BACKUP DATABASE [AdventureWorks2012] TO DISK.... The DatabaseBackup procedure runs database backups in alphabetical order based on the database name, so this allows tracking a job progress.

Many thanks to Adam Machanic (b|t) for sp_whoisactive, Ola Hallengren (b|t) for his Maintenance Solution, and Aaron Bertrand (b|t) for his advice on formatting the estimated completion time more elegantly. I finally had an opportunity to use it.

I hope you can put this procedure to good use. Let me know if you have any questions.