Question

I use RedGate SQL data compare and generated a .sql file, so I could run it on my local machine. But the problem is that the file is over 300mb, which means I can’t do copy and paste because the clipboard won’t be able to handle it, and when I try to open the file in SQL Server Management Studio I get an error about the file being too large.

Is there a way to run a large .sql file? The file basically contains data for two new tables.

Answer 1

From the command prompt, start up sqlcmd:

sqlcmd -S <server> -i C:\<your file here>.sql  

Just replace <server> with the location of your SQL box and <your file here> with the name of your script. Don’t forget, if you’re using a SQL instance the syntax is:

sqlcmd -S <server>\instance. 

Here is the list of all arguments you can pass sqlcmd:

Sqlcmd            [-U login id]          [-P password]   [-S server]            [-H hostname]          [-E trusted connection]   [-d use database name] [-l login timeout]     [-t query timeout]    [-h headers]           [-s colseparator]      [-w screen width]   [-a packetsize]        [-e echo input]        [-I Enable Quoted Identifiers]   [-c cmdend]            [-L[c] list servers[clean output]]   [-q 'cmdline query']   [-Q 'cmdline query' and exit]    [-m errorlevel]        [-V severitylevel]     [-W remove trailing spaces]   [-u unicode output]    [-r[0|1] msgs to stderr]   [-i inputfile]         [-o outputfile]        [-z new password]   [-f  | i:[,o:]] [-Z new password and exit]    [-k[1|2] remove[replace] control characters]   [-y variable length type display width]   [-Y fixed length type display width]   [-p[1] print statistics[colon format]]   [-R use client regional setting]   [-b On error batch abort]   [-v var = 'value'...]  [-A dedicated admin connection]   [-X[1] disable commands, startup script, environment variables [and exit]]   [-x disable variable substitution]   [-? show syntax summary]