Blocking Processes (lead blocker)

Finding the lead blocker in a chain of blocks is a difficult challenge when using sp_who2. There are also a lot of detect blocking scripts that I have run in production environments that seem to block things themselves.

Probably the most efficient way to detect blocks is to query sysprocesses. The following script displays the lead blocker in a chain of blocks:

SELECT
    spid
    ,sp.STATUS
    ,loginame   = SUBSTRING(loginame, 1, 12)
    ,hostname   = SUBSTRING(hostname, 1, 12)
    ,blk        = CONVERT(CHAR(3), blocked)
    ,open_tran
    ,dbname     = SUBSTRING(DB_NAME(sp.dbid),1,10)
    ,cmd
    ,waittype
    ,waittime
    ,last_batch
    ,SQLStatement       =
        SUBSTRING
        (
            qt.text,
            er.statement_start_offset/2,
            (CASE WHEN er.statement_end_offset = -1
                THEN LEN(CONVERT(nvarchar(MAX), qt.text)) * 2
                ELSE er.statement_end_offset
                END - er.statement_start_offset)/2
        )
FROM master.dbo.sysprocesses sp
LEFT JOIN sys.dm_exec_requests er
    ON er.session_id = sp.spid
OUTER APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(er.sql_handle) AS qt
WHERE spid IN (SELECT blocked FROM master.dbo.sysprocesses)
AND blocked = 0

This will also display the SQL Statement that is the offending blocker.