Oracle: How to find out if there is a transaction pending?

I'm looking for a way to find out if there are uncommited INSERT, UPDATE or DELETE statements in the current session. One way would be to check v$lock with the current sid, but that requires read access to v$lock, which is a problem if the DBA doesn't want to grant it. Any other ways (other than keeping track of all database commands issued by the application)?

you can check if your session has a row in V$TRANSACTION (obviously that requires read privilege on this view):

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*)
       FROM v$transaction t, v$session s, v$mystat m
      WHERE t.ses_addr = s.saddr
        AND s.sid = m.sid
        AND ROWNUM = 1;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0

SQL> insert into a values (1);

1 row inserted

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*)
       FROM v$transaction t, v$session s, v$mystat m
      WHERE t.ses_addr = s.saddr
        AND s.sid = m.sid
        AND ROWNUM = 1;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         1

SQL> commit;

Commit complete

SQL> SELECT COUNT(*)
       FROM v$transaction t, v$session s, v$mystat m
      WHERE t.ses_addr = s.saddr
        AND s.sid = m.sid
        AND ROWNUM = 1;

  COUNT(*)
----------
         0

This is the query I normally use,

select s.sid
      ,s.serial#
      ,s.username
      ,s.machine
      ,s.status
      ,s.lockwait
      ,t.used_ublk
      ,t.used_urec
      ,t.start_time
from v$transaction t
inner join v$session s on t.addr = s.taddr;