Why doesn't this work as a shell command

Question

I have a fairly simple stored procedure that I can successfully run as a windows command SQLCMD ...... When I invoke this procedure from a Visual Studio project as shell("sqlcmd ...."), I get no results. I don't know where to begin troubleshooting.

Answer 1

There could be several reasons why the shell command is not working as expected. Here are a few suggestions on how to troubleshoot the issue:

1. Check if the SQLCMD command is available in the environment variables path. To do this, open a command prompt window and type "sqlcmd" and see if it executes the command. If it doesn't execute, then you might need to add the SQLCMD location to the system's path.
2. Ensure that the command shell is running with the correct permissions to access the SQL Server instance. Verify that the user running the shell command has the necessary permissions to access the SQL Server instance.
3. Check the command syntax used in the Visual Studio project. Ensure that the command syntax used in the shell command is correct and matches the one used in the successful SQLCMD command.
4. Check the output location of the shell command. The shell command might be executing successfully, but the output might be getting redirected to a different location. Check if the output is being redirected to a file or to a different console window.
5. Use debugging to identify the issue. You can set breakpoints in the code where the shell command is executed to see if any errors are being thrown or if the program is executing the command successfully.

Hopefully, one of these suggestions will help you troubleshoot the issue and get the shell command to work as expected.