How to identify long-running queries, not just long-running backends?

Jeff Boes <jboes@nexcerpt.com>

From: Jeff Boes <jboes@nexcerpt.com>
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Date: 2005-03-31T15:33:07Z
Lists: pgsql-general
I need a way to identify Pg backends which have been running a given 
query for a long time. What I have so far is to use pg_stat_activity and 
the process table (in my case, via Perl's Proc::ProcessTable) to 
identify processes with a lot of CPU usage and an active query. The 
problem is false positives: since we use a daemon architecture which may 
keep a Pg backend open for a while and run many, many queries, I can't 
tell the difference between a backend which has run one query with 
elapsed time of several minutes, and a backend which has run 1000 
queries each with a sub-second elapsed time.

What I'm really hoping for is a way to get the "start time" for a query 
in pg_stat_activity.

I'm using 7.4.1, by the way.

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