How to list active / open connections in Oracle

There are times that you may need to issue a “SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE” command to an Oracle Database. It is critical that you should consider checking who are the users that are currently running sessions on that Database. You don’t want to shutdown on your Boss or VP on Finance. Here’s a simple SQL to find all Active sessions in your Oracle Database:

select
       substr(a.spid,1,9) pid,
       substr(b.sid,1,5) sid,
       substr(b.serial#,1,5) ser#,
       substr(b.machine,1,6) box,
       substr(b.username,1,10) username,
       b.server,
       substr(b.osuser,1,8) os_user,
       substr(b.program,1,30) program
from v$session b, v$process a
where b.paddr = a.addr
  and type='USER'
order by spid;