Question:
I have some complex engine control software that has to run under MS-DOS 6.2, but it needs to transfer data to SQL Server 7. What’s the best way to connect to SQL Server from DOS?
Answer:
You can use OSQL or ISQL to connect to SQL Server from the command line. Both of these utilities are Win32 command-line utilities that allow you to log in to a server and issue any SQL command. The OSQL utility supports the most functionality and uses ODBC to connect to SQL Server. The syntax “osql/?” provides a listing of all OSQL flags.
This syntax connects to a server and issues a query:
osql -S "servername" -U "sa" -d "pubs" -q "SELECT * FROM Authors"
To insert data into a database, you could put OSQL commands in a batch file or provide an input file of SQL INSERT commands. See the SQL Server BOL for details and syntax of OSQL.
If you have a straight DOS box, you need to install the 16-bit client that comes with SQL Server 6.5. Both the client and the 6.5 version of ISQL use DB-Lib, which doesn’t support some SQL Server 7 features like unicode columns, varchar columns larger than 255, etc.
