Well, in the past I have approached it from the other end: (AND query NOT ILIKE ('insert') AND query NOT ILIKE...) excluding queries I didn't care about -- Scott Ribe scott_ribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottribe/ > On Jul 11, 2024, at 10:03 AM, Ron Johnson <ronljohnsonjr@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > This query works, and works quite well, but fails if the query starts with a comment. > > So far, I've accepted that "false negative" error, because being too aggressive at finding the word SELECT in a query is a worse problem. (For example, the string "select" might be in a column name that's part of a long-running COPY or ALTER.) > > But I've always hoped for something better. Thus: is there any way in SQL to parse pg_stat_activity.query for the purpose of excluding comments? > > PG versions 9.6.24 (yes, it's EOL), 14.12, 15.7 and 16.3, if it makes a difference. > > SELECT datname, > pid, > client_addr, > client_hostname, > query_start, > to_char(EXTRACT(epoch FROM now()-query_start), '99,999.99') as elapsed_secs, > md5(query) > pg_stat_activity > WHERE datname not in ('postgres', 'template0', 'template1') > AND state != 'idle' > AND client_hostname !~ 'db[1-8].example.com' > AND EXTRACT(epoch FROM now() - query_start) > 1800 > AND SUBSTRING(upper(query) from 1 for 6) = 'SELECT'; >