Dynamic Management Views

written by Greg Robidoux May 4, 2025 0 comments

Overview

With the introduction of SQL Server 2005, Microsoft introduced Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) which allow you to get better insight into what is happening in SQL Server. Without these new tools a lot of the information was unavailable or very difficult to obtain.

DMVs are a great tool to help troubleshoot performance related issues and once you understand their power they will become a staple for your Database Administration.

Explanation

The DMVs were introduced in SQL 2005 and with each new release, Microsoft has been adding additional DMVs to help troubleshoot issues. DMVs actually come in two flavors DMVs (dynamic management views) and DMFs (dynamic management functions) and are sometimes classified as DMOs (dynamic management objects). The DMVs act just like any other view where you can select data from them and the DMFs require values to be passed to the function just like any other function.

The DMVs are broken down into the following categories:

Here are some of the more useful DMVs that you should familiarize yourself with:

sys.dm_exec_cached_plans – Cached query plans available to SQL Server
sys.dm_exec_sessions – Sessions in SQL Server
sys.dm_exec_connections – Connections to SQL Server
sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats – Seeks, scans, lookups per index
sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats – IO statistics for databases and log files
sys.dm_tran_active_transactions – Transaction state for an instance of SQL Server
sys.dm_exec_sql_text – Returns TSQL code
sys.dm_exec_query_plan – Returns query plan
sys.dm_os_wait_stats – Returns information what resources SQL is waiting on
sys.dm_os_performance_counters – Returns performance monitor counters related to SQL Server

Additional Information

Here are some additional articles about DMVs.

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