SQL Server Community Tools: Using sp_WhoIsActive To Track Down Implicit Transactions

In The Annals

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When people talk about bad ideas in SQL Server, implicit transactions are pretty high on the list.

I’ve talked about why in the past, but up until recently sp_WhoIsActive didn’t do much to surface queries using them.

By “not much” I mean “nothing at all”. Which isn’t to knock the procedure at all; it hasn’t quite lived long enough to become a villain.

But anyway, you should avoid implicit transactions as much as possible. They most often show up in the Microsoft JDBC driver queries that only people who hate you use.

When I first started to realize how bad they are, I wrote a bunch of checks into the Blitz scripts (I’ll cover those next week) that check for them.

I also opened an issue to add the check to sp_WhoIsActive, because it’s rather popular, I hear.

In The Actions

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To see when queries are using implicit transactions, you need to do this:

EXEC sp_WhoIsActive
    @get_transaction_info = 1;

Which, I mean, seems like a rational design choice. Want information about implicit transactions? Get transaction info!

In the results, you’ll see this helpful column that will tell you if something is setting the implicit transactions property to true for a session.

If you see this, burn the application down. It’s time to start fresh.

Thanks for reading!

Going Further

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