SQLCMD

I had my first play with SQLCMD on a SQL 2012 Development Server on which the evaluation period had expired. Incidentally this meant SSMS would not run locally (along with maint-plan backups), however the services and other jobs where still working, and remote SSMS could connect and interact as normal.

SQLCMD remind me of Oracle SQLPlus, with the added benefit that you can use the up & down arrow keys to step through history.

— connect (as current windows user)
sqlcmd -S server\instance
sqlcmd -S .\instance

— interact
select @@version
go

— interact over multiple rows
select name
from sys.databases
go

— clear the command cache
select @version
:reset
select @@version
go

— redirect output to a file
:out c:\output.txt
select @@version
go

— reset output back to the screen
:out stdout
select @@version
go

— quit
quit
exit
ctl-c