Assuming you have a large number of databases with hundreds of active users on a server, it is often very difficult to follow a blocking chain that affects one of the databases, since sp_who2 returns all the processes for all the databases available.
This is the reason why I have modified sp_who2 and the new stored procedure called sp_who3 limits its scope only to the database name passed as parameter, or databases that match the substring in the parameter.
Without a parameter sp_who3 returns a listing similar to the output of sp_who2 ordered by SPID. (exec sp_who3)
Another way of using sp_who3 is passing a database name as parameter. The stored procedure will return only those user processes relating to the specified database. It is therefore easy to follow a blocking chain for example. (exec sp_who3 'DatabaseName').
You can also use sp_who3 by passing a part of the database name as parameter.
This is particularly useful if for example you have a large number of Test databases and a large number of Beta databases on the same server and you have a consistent naming convention, like <DatabaseName>Test and <DatabaseName>Beta.
You can use sp_who3 to display user processes relating to a database subset of all databases available on the server like this: exec sp_who3 'Beta'
This is what I use to rapidly find out which users are logged on to the Beta system. This allows me to see at a glance whether the logged users are just backend services, or if real operators use the Beta system for testing.
I hope that you will find sp_who3 useful and easy to use.
