Command Line Interface (CLI)
In addition to the DbVisualizer GUI tool, there is also a pure command line interface for running scripts. We recommend that you use this interface for tasks that you schedule via the operating system's scheduling tool, or when you need to include database tasks in a command script for a larger job. It is also the right tool for execution of large scripts, such as a script generated by the DbVisualizer Export Schema feature.
On Windows and Linux/Unix, you find this command as a BAT file (dbviscmd.bat) or a shell script (dbviscmd.sh) in the DbVisualizer installation directory. For macOS, the shell script is located in /Application/DbVisualizer-<Version>.app/Contents/Resources/app.
Command Line Options
The command line interface supports the following options:
Usage: dbviscmd (-connection <name> |
-url -drivername | -url -driverclass -driverpath))
[-userid <userid>] [-password <password>]
-sql <statements> | -sqlfile <filename> [-encoding <encoding>]
[-catalog <catalog>] [-schema <schema>]
[-maxrows <max>] [-maxchars <max>]
[-stoponerror] [-stoponwarning]
[-stripcomments true | false]
[-output all | none | log | result] [-outputfile <filename>]
[-listconnections]
[-debug [-debugfile <filename>]
[-prefsdir <directory>]
[-masterpw <password>] [-help] [-version]
Options:
-connection <name> Database connection name (created with the GUI)
-url <URL> Database URL
-drivername <name> Database driver name (created with the GUI)
-driverclass <name> Full name of the JDBC Driver class name
-driverpath <p1:p2..> Paths to the jar files constituting the JDBC driver. Each path separated by a ":"
-userid <userid> Userid to connect as
-password <password> Password for userid
-sql <statements> One or more delimited SQL statements
-sqlfile <filename> SQL script file to execute
-encoding <encoding> Encoding for the SQL script file
-catalog <catalog> Catalog to use for unqualified identifiers
-schema <schema> Schema to use for unqualified identifiers
-maxrows <max> Maximum number of rows to display for a result set
-maxchars <max> Maximum number of characters to display for a column
-stoponerror Stop execution when getting an error
-stoponsqlwarning Stop execution when getting an SQL warning
-stoponnorows Stop execution when empty result set or no affected rows
-stripcomments Strip comments before sending to database. Default is
the setting made in the GUI
-output "all" (default), output both log msgs and result sets
"none", suppress both log messages and result sets
"log", output only log messages
"result", output only result sets
-outputfile <filename> Script execution output file. Default is stdout
-listconnections Lists all database connections
-debug Write debug messages
-debugfile <filename> File for debug messages. Default is stderr
-errordir <directory> Use an alternate location for error logs
-prefsdir <directory> Use an alternate user preferences directory
-masterpw <password> Master Password for encrypted database passwords
-help Display this help
-version Show version info
There are two options to to specify which database to connect to:
- Using a connection already defined by the DbVisualizer tool. This is done by using the
-connection
parameter. If you have forgot the connection name, use the-listconnections
option to get a list of all existing names. - Specifying the connection properties by using the parameter
-url
. The-url
parameter specifies the JDBC URL for the database to connect to. For information about the JDBC url see Setting Up a Connection Manually. There are also some examples below showing how to specify connection properties using the-url
parameter
Examples
Executing single statements
You can use the command line interface to execute a single SQL statement:
> dbviscmd.bat -connection "Oracle" -sql "select * from hr.countries"
14:34:48 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: Oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
14:34:48 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: Oracle
COUNTRY_ID COUNTRY_NAME REGION_ID
---------- ------------------------ ---------
AR Argentina 2
AU Australia 3
BE Belgium 1
BR Brazil 2
CA Canada 2
CH Switzerland 1
CN China 3
DE Germany 1
DK Denmark 1
EG Egypt 4
FR France 1
HK HongKong 3
IL Israel 4
IN India 3
IT Italy 1
JP Japan 3
KW Kuwait 4
MX Mexico 2
NG Nigeria 4
NL Netherlands 1
SG Singapore 3
UK United Kingdom 1
US United States of America 2
ZM Zambia 4
ZW Zimbabwe 4
14:34:48 SUCCESS [SELECT - 25 rows, 0.007 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.countries;
14:34:48 END Execution 1 statement(s) executed, 25 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.007/0.005 secs [1 successful, 0 errors]
If you like to execute just a few statements, you can pass in a list of statements:
> dbviscmd.bat -connection "Oracle" -sql "select * from hr.countries; select * from hr.regions"
14:42:21 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: Oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
14:42:21 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: Oracle
COUNTRY_ID COUNTRY_NAME REGION_ID
---------- ------------------------ ---------
AR Argentina 2
AU Australia 3
BE Belgium 1
BR Brazil 2
CA Canada 2
CH Switzerland 1
CN China 3
DE Germany 1
DK Denmark 1
EG Egypt 4
FR France 1
HK HongKong 3
IL Israel 4
IN India 3
IT Italy 1
JP Japan 3
KW Kuwait 4
MX Mexico 2
NG Nigeria 4
NL Netherlands 1
SG Singapore 3
UK United Kingdom 1
US United States of America 2
ZM Zambia 4
ZW Zimbabwe 4
14:42:21 SUCCESS [SELECT - 25 rows, 0.004 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.countries;
REGION_ID REGION_NAME
--------- ----------------------
5 Australia
6 South America
1 Europe
2 Americas
3 Asia
4 Middle East and Africa
14:42:21 SUCCESS [SELECT - 6 rows, 0.003 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.regions;
14:42:21 END Execution 2 statement(s) executed, 31 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.007/0.002 secs [2 successful, 0 errors]
Executing scripts
If you frequently want to execute a number of statements, it's best to put them into a script file. Here's how to execute a script that contains the two statements from the example above:
> dbviscmd.bat -connection "Oracle" -sqlfile "myscript.sql"
14:45:11 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: Oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
14:45:11 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: Oracle
COUNTRY_ID COUNTRY_NAME REGION_ID
---------- ------------------------ ---------
AR Argentina 2
AU Australia 3
BE Belgium 1
BR Brazil 2
CA Canada 2
CH Switzerland 1
CN China 3
DE Germany 1
DK Denmark 1
EG Egypt 4
FR France 1
HK HongKong 3
IL Israel 4
IN India 3
IT Italy 1
JP Japan 3
KW Kuwait 4
MX Mexico 2
NG Nigeria 4
NL Netherlands 1
SG Singapore 3
UK United Kingdom 1
US United States of America 2
ZM Zambia 4
ZW Zimbabwe 4
14:45:11 SUCCESS [SELECT - 25 rows, 0.004 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.countries;
REGION_ID REGION_NAME
--------- ----------------------
5 Australia
6 South America
1 Europe
2 Americas
3 Asia
4 Middle East and Africa
14:45:11 SUCCESS [SELECT - 6 rows, 0.003 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.regions;
14:45:11 END Execution 2 statement(s) executed, 31 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.007/0.002 secs [2 successful, 0 errors]
Controlling the output
You can use options to control how much output to generate. If you only want to see the results, use the -output
option with the result keyword:
> dbviscmd.bat -connection "Oracle" -sqlfile "myscript.sql" -output result
COUNTRY_ID COUNTRY_NAME REGION_ID
---------- ------------------------ ---------
AR Argentina 2
AU Australia 3
BE Belgium 1
BR Brazil 2
CA Canada 2
CH Switzerland 1
CN China 3
DE Germany 1
DK Denmark 1
EG Egypt 4
FR France 1
HK HongKong 3
IL Israel 4
IN India 3
IT Italy 1
JP Japan 3
KW Kuwait 4
MX Mexico 2
NG Nigeria 4
NL Netherlands 1
SG Singapore 3
UK United Kingdom 1
US United States of America 2
ZM Zambia 4
ZW Zimbabwe 4
REGION_ID REGION_NAME
--------- ----------------------
1 Europe
2 Americas
3 Asia
4 Middle East and Africa
For other scripts, for instance a script containing INSERT statements, you may only want to see the log messages:
> dbviscmd.bat -connection "Oracle" -sqlfile "myscript.sql" -output log
14:25:29 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: Oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
14:25:30 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: Oracle
14:25:30 SUCCESS [SELECT - 25 rows, 0.012 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.countries;
14:25:30 SUCCESS [SELECT - 4 rows, 0.009 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.regions;
14:25:30 END Execution 2 statement(s) executed, 29 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.021/0.004 secs [2 successful, 0 errors]
Combining OS scripts, the command line interface and DbVisualizer variables
For more complex tasks, you can call the command line interface from a shell script, for instance a Bourne shell script on Unix or a BAT file on Windows. You can also use DbVisualizer variables to pass information between the shell script and the SQL script. In this example, we have a simple SQL script (cmdtest.sql) that contains a SELECT statement with a variable in place for the table name:
cmdtest.sql
select * from ${table}$
A text file (tables.txt) contains the table names we want to execute the SQL script with:
tables.txt
hr.countries
hr.regions
In a command shell (Bourne or Bash), we can then execute the script using the table names from the text file:
for name in `cat tables.txt`;
do ./dbviscmd.sh -connection "oracle" -sql "@run cmdtest.sql \${table||$name||||nobind}\$; ";
done
15:01:19 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
15:01:20 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: oracle
15:01:20 RUNNING [@run ...ntries||||nobind}$ - - secs]
@run cmdtest.sql ${table||hr.countries||||nobind}$;
COUNTRY_ID COUNTRY_NAME REGION_ID
---------- ------------------------ ---------
AR Argentina 2
AU Australia 3
BE Belgium 1
BR Brazil 2
CA Canada 2
CH Switzerland 1
CN China 3
DE Germany 1
DK Denmark 1
EG Egypt 4
FR France 1
HK HongKong 3
IL Israel 4
IN India 3
IT Italy 1
JP Japan 3
KW Kuwait 4
MX Mexico 2
NG Nigeria 4
NL Netherlands 1
SG Singapore 3
UK United Kingdom 1
US United States of America 2
ZM Zambia 4
ZW Zimbabwe 4
15:01:20 SUCCESS [SELECT - 25 rows, 0.016 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.countries;
15:01:20 SUCCESS [@run ...ntries||||nobind}$ - 0.016 secs] Script processed
@run cmdtest.sql ${table||hr.countries||||nobind}$;
15:01:20 END Execution 1 statement(s) executed, 25 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.016/0.012 secs [1 successful, 0 errors]
java -cp /Users/ulf/work/github/dbvis/trunk/pureit/apps/dbvis/classes:/Users/ulf/work/github/dbvis/trunk/pureit/apps/dbvis/resources:/Users/ulf/work/github/dbvis/trunk/pureit/apps/dbvis/external/* -Xmx512M -Djava.awt.headless=true -Ddbvis.home=/Users/ulf/work/github/dbvis/trunk/pureit/apps/dbvis com.onseven.dbvis.DbVisualizerCmd -masterpw stairway -connection oracle -sql @run cmdtest.sql ${table||hr.regions||||nobind}$;
15:01:23 START Executing Command Line, Database Connection: oracle Database Type: ORACLE Catalog: null Schema: SYSTEM
15:01:23 INFO Physical database connection acquired for: oracle
15:01:23 RUNNING [@run ...egions||||nobind}$ - - secs]
@run cmdtest.sql ${table||hr.regions||||nobind}$;
REGION_ID REGION_NAME
--------- ----------------------
5 Australia
6 South America
1 Europe
2 Americas
3 Asia
4 Middle East and Africa
15:01:23 SUCCESS [SELECT - 6 rows, 0.001 secs] Result set fetched
select * from hr.regions;
15:01:23 SUCCESS [@run ...egions||||nobind}$ - 0.001 secs] Script processed
@run cmdtest.sql ${table||hr.regions||||nobind}$;
15:01:23 END Execution 1 statement(s) executed, 6 row(s) affected, exec/fetch time: 0.001/0.000 secs [1 successful, 0 errors]
The command line interface is called with the -sql
option, specifying the client-side command @run. A DbVisualizer variable is passed to the @run
command with the value taken from the shell variable. This DbVisualizer variable value is then available to the script executed by the @run
command.
Note that you may need to escape certain characters that the shell would otherwise interpret, like the dollar signs that are part of the DbVisualizer variable delimiters.
Setting up the connection properties on the command line
As an alternative to using a connection already set-up through the DbVisualizer tool you may use the -url
parameter. In combination with the parameters -drivername
, -driverclass
, and -driverpath
these parameters enables you connect without prior specification using the DbVisualizer tool.
Following are some examples.
Executing SQL towards a MySQL instance running on localhost
port 3306
. The parameter"-drivername MYSQL"
specifies that we are using a JDBC driver specified in the DbVisualizer tool named MYSQL
. For listing of the existing drivers use the Tools->Driver Manager in the DbVisualizer tool. Read more in Installing a JDBC Driver.
Using -url and -drivername parameters
./dbviscmd.sh -url jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/
-drivername MYSQL
-sql "select * from sakila.actor"
-userid root
An alternative to use the -drivername
you may use the parameters -driverclass
and -driverpath
to specify the JDBC driver.
Using -driverclass and -driverpath parameters
./dbviscmd.sh -url jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521/ORCL
-driverclass oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver
-driverpath "ojdbc6.jar:orai18n.jar:xdb.jar:xmlparserv2.jar"
-sql "select * from HR.COUNTRIES"
-userid system
-password oracle
The above example connects to an Oracle instance on localhost
and port 1521
. Note that the separator character ':' between the different jar files is platform dependant. On Windows-based desktop platforms, the value of this field is the semicolon ";".