Idle in transaction help

Hi everyone,

I need some help with tracking down idle in transaction problems. We
have a custom application that is leaving queries in idle in transaction
status for unknown reasons. The developers are working on ways to track
it down, but right now the options on their end are limited and it will
be at least 1-2 months until they have something working. I am trying
to track down the problem from the PG end in the meantime. Is there any
way to tell what query is hanging in idle in transaction status? Or
what the current or previous query was/is, since idle in transaction
doesn't tell me anything? I'm kind of at a loss on what if anything I
can do from the database end to help (read push) the programmers to find
and fix this problem.

My first priority is helping them find and fix the problem if I can. My
second priority is finding an automated way to deal with the idle in
transactions as they are locking tables and rows, causing other
transactions to hang also. None of the timeouts appear to affect idle
in transactions.

I'm on PG 8.3.7. Upgrading to 8.4 won't be an option for several
months, enough time for the developers to test and develop against 8.4.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Scot Kreienkamp