How to determine total number of open/active connections in ms sql server 2005

Question

My PHP/MS Sql Server 2005/win 2003 Application occasionally becomes very unresponsive, the memory/cpu usage does not spike. If i try to open any new connection from sql man

Answer 1

As @jwalkerjr mentioned, you should be disposing of connections in code (if connection pooling is enabled, they are just returned to the connection pool). The prescribed way to do this is using the 'using' statement:

// Execute stored proc to read data from repository
using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(this.connectionString))
{
    using (SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
    {
        cmd.CommandText = "LoadFromRepository";
        cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;
        cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@ID", fileID);

        conn.Open();
        using (SqlDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection))
        {
            if (rdr.Read())
            {
                filename = SaveToFileSystem(rdr, folderfilepath);
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I know this is old, but thought it would be a good idea to update. If an accurate count is needed, then column ECID should probably be filtered as well. A SPID with parallel threads can show up multiple times in sysprocesses and filtering ECID=0 will return the primary thread for each SPID.

SELECT 
    DB_NAME(dbid) as DBName, 
    COUNT(dbid) as NumberOfConnections,
    loginame as LoginName
FROM
    sys.sysprocesses with (nolock)
WHERE 
    dbid > 0
    and ecid=0
GROUP BY 
    dbid, loginame