Top Transactions by Blocked Transactions Count

I'm continuing my series on the Standard Reports in SQL Server Management Studio, and today I'm covering a report that shows the transactions on an instance that block others. I’ve described some of this blocking activity here, but this report orders them differently.

You get three main bands. The outer one is arranged by the Transaction ID:

TransactionID	The ID of the Transaction that is blocking other transactions
# Directly Blocked Transactions	The number of statements this session is blocking
# Indirectly Blocked Transactions	The number of downstream transactions this one causes to block others
Transaction Name	Name of the transaction, if set. Otherwise, this is set to "user_transaction"
State	Whether this transaction is active or not.
Transaction Type	Whether this transaction is a complete statement or a fragment of another.
Start Time	The time this transaction started blocking another.
Resource Type	The type of lock taken. Values can be: DATABASE, FILE, OBJECT, PAGE, KEY, EXTENT, RID, APPLICATION, METADATA, HOBT, or ALLOCATION_UNIT.
Session ID	The session ID of the transaction - this is the number that uniquely identifies the statement that also shows up when you do an sp_who2 statement.
Blocking SQL Statement	The portion of the transaction where the blocking occurs. This doesn't always indicate the exact offending statement.

The next band shows the statement that is being blocked. It starts off with the Blocking SQL Statement:

Blocking SQL Statement	The portion of the transaction where the blocking occurs. This doesn't always indicate the exact offending statement.
Direct/Indirect	Shows whether the lock is directly blocking another transaction or is part of a blocking chain.
Blocked Transaction ID	The Transaction ID that is blocked.
Blocked Transaction Name	Shows the name of the transaction that is blocked, if set. Otherwise, this is set to "user_transaction"
State	Whether this transaction is active or not .
Transaction Type	Whether this transaction is a complete statement or a fragment of another.
Start Time	The time this transaction started blocking another.
Resource Type	The type of lock taken.
Session ID	The session ID of the transaction - this is the number that uniquely identifies the statement that also shows up when you do an sp_who2 statement.
Blocked SQL Statement	The portion of the transaction where the blocking occurs. This doesn't always indicate the exact offending statement.

The last band just shows the Blocked SQL Statement – but that may perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle. That’s often where you’ll get your first indication that something is wrong.