Postgresql Tips n' Tricks

Fri 22 November 2013
By Felipe Reyes
  • pg_stat_activity

pg_stat_activity is a view that belongs to the postgresql catalog, it helps you to view the status of the queries that are in execution, the explanation of each column can be found in the postgresql manual The Statistics Collector section (I don't want to do a simply copy-paste, so see the official documentation).

Column Type Modifiers
datid oid  
datname name  
procpid integer  
usesysid oid  
usename name  
current_query text  
waiting boolean  
xact_start timestamp with time zone  
query_start timestamp with time zone  
backend_start timestamp with time zone  
client_addr inet  
client_port integer  
SELECT * FROM pg_stat_activity;
  • If you want to view the queries that are stuck (usually due to a lock or simply waiting for I/O) you can execute the following query:

    SELECT * FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE waiting = TRUE;