Monitoring the progress of an SQL query in SQL SERVER

Question

I saw a similar question which asked how to monitor the progress of a backup/restore operation: Is there a SQL script that I can use to determine the progress of a SQL Serve

Answer 1

There is no way to know how much time is left. A query's runtime depends on many things beyond the actual query itself: locking/blocking of other queries, other processes consuming resources (CPU/disk usage), the operating system, network, etc. What if your 5-minute query is running, yet someone else kicks off a large report, your query may run 5:30 now. What if the someone starts to download a large file and hogs all the network bandwidth? What if the OS decides to do something in the background, etc. Until all the rows are returned, the query isn't done, but it can run in a variable time frame.