MSSQL-CLI : Command Line query Tool for SQL Server

SQL Server is among one of the best Relational Databases out there. The problem with Microsoft tools was that it was only working with Windows and not cross platform.

Now Microsoft also started creating tools for Cross Platform, one such example is SQL Server 2017 which is released for Linux. Similarly it has released MSSQL-CLI which is a cross-platform command line client for SQL Server which can be used in Linux, Mac or even Windows.

To get started you need to have Python installed on your system and then install the CLI using the PIP command as shown below :

pip install mssql-cli

Once done you can check all the commands available using mssql-cli --help

Next is to connect the Database and explore different features of MSSQL-CLI. For connecting to the database you need to run the command

mssql-cli -S YourServerName -E -d YourDatabaseName

Now some of the Important features are shown below of the MSSQL-CLI and they are Auto-completion and Syntax Highlighting with Green as shown below.

One more thing I have seen which can be seen in above GIF is that if you have written the command before it will take that command and show you in the current command if you would like to run it again.

Now I feel it is a great advantage not only for the Mac or Linux user but also for the Windows user, one of the advantage is It is fast I can query and get the result in seconds and I can do a lot of stuff on the CLI itself.