How to get output from SQLCMD or OSQL?

Question

Looked everywhere... to no avail.

I am trying to do a basic select using SQLCMD from the command line:

sqlcmd -S myServer -d myDB -E

So far so good.

select * from myTable

Nothing, just goes to the next line. Shouldn't it display a table with values ? Or at least "n row(s) returned" ?

I also tried the -o param: it creates an empty file.

Answer 1

When you use the SQLCMD tool in interactive mode statements that you enter are sent to the server when you use the keyword GO.

GO signals both the end of a batch and the execution of any cached Transact-SQL statements. When specifying a value for count, the cached statements will be executed count times, as a single batch.

See Use the sqlcmd Utility specifically the section titled Running Transact-SQL Statements Interactively by Using sqlcmd

So in your case:

select * from myTable enter

GOenter