postgres-long-running-transactions Tool

The postgres-long-running-transactions tool Identifies and lists database transactions that exceed a specified time limit. For each of the long running transactions, the output contains the process id, database name, user name, application name, client address, state, connection age, transaction age, query age, last activity age, wait event type, wait event, and query string.

2 minute read

About

The postgres-long-running-transactions tool reports transactions that exceed a configured duration threshold by scanning pg_stat_activity for sessions where xact_start is set and older than the configured interval.

The tool returns a JSON array with one object per matching session (non-idle). Each object contains the process id, database and user, application name, client address, session state, several age intervals (connection, transaction, query, and last activity), wait event info, and the SQL text currently associated with the session.

Parameters:

min_duration (optional): Only show transactions running at least this long (Postgres interval format, e.g., ‘5 minutes’). Default: 5 minutes.
limit (optional): Maximum number of results to return. Default: 20.

Compatible Sources

This tool can be used with the following database sources:

Source Name
PostgreSQL Source
AlloyDB for PostgreSQL Source
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL Source

Parameters

field	type	required	description
pid	integer	true	Process id (backend pid).
datname	string	true	Database name.
usename	string	true	Database user name.
appname	string	false	Application name (client application).
client_addr	string	false	Client IPv4/IPv6 address (may be null for local connections).
state	string	true	Session state (e.g., active, idle in transaction).
conn_age	string	true	Age of the connection: `now() - backend_start` (Postgres interval serialized as string).
xact_age	string	true	Age of the transaction: `now() - xact_start` (Postgres interval serialized as string).
query_age	string	true	Age of the currently running query: `now() - query_start` (Postgres interval serialized as string).
last_activity_age	string	true	Time since last state change: `now() - state_change` (Postgres interval serialized as string).
wait_event_type	string	false	Type of event the backend is waiting on (may be null).
wait_event	string	false	Specific wait event name (may be null).
query	string	true	SQL text associated with the session.

Example

kind: tools
name: long_running_transactions
type: postgres-long-running-transactions
source: postgres-source
description: "Identifies transactions open longer than a threshold and returns details including query text and durations."

Example response element:

{
  "pid": 12345,
  "datname": "my_database",
  "usename": "dbuser",
  "appname": "my_app",
  "client_addr": "10.0.0.5",
  "state": "idle in transaction",
  "conn_age": "00:12:34",
  "xact_age": "00:06:00",
  "query_age": "00:02:00",
  "last_activity_age": "00:01:30",
  "wait_event_type": null,
  "wait_event": null,
  "query": "UPDATE users SET last_seen = now() WHERE id = 42;"
}

Query

The SQL used by the tool looks like:

SELECT
  pid,
  datname,
  usename,
  application_name as appname,
  client_addr,
  state,
  now() - backend_start as conn_age,
  now() - xact_start as xact_age,
  now() - query_start as query_age,
  now() - state_change as last_activity_age,
  wait_event_type,
  wait_event,
  query
FROM
  pg_stat_activity
WHERE
  state <> 'idle'
  AND (now() - xact_start) > COALESCE($1::INTERVAL, interval '5 minutes')
  AND xact_start IS NOT NULL
  AND pid <> pg_backend_pid()
ORDER BY
  xact_age DESC
LIMIT 
  COALESCE($2::int, 20);

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Last modified March 12, 2026: docs: Add page standardization to external tool integrations (#2668) (7679d0a46a9)