Edit

Quickstart: Create a new local copy of a database in a container with sqlcmd

  • Article

In this quickstart, you'll use a single command in sqlcmd to create a new container, and restore a database to that container to create a new local copy of a database, for development or testing.

Prerequisites

Remarks

Installing sqlcmd (Go) via a package manager replaces sqlcmd (ODBC) with sqlcmd (Go) in your environment path. Any current command line sessions need to be closed and reopened for this change to take to effect. sqlcmd (ODBC) isn't removed, and can still be used by specifying the full path to the executable.

You can also update your PATH variable to indicate which version takes precedence. To do so in Windows 11, open System settings and go to About > Advanced system settings. When System Properties opens, select the Environment Variables button. In the lower half, under System variables, select Path and then select Edit. If the location sqlcmd (Go) is saved to (C:\Program Files\sqlcmd is default) is listed before C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\<version>\Tools\Binn, then sqlcmd (Go) is used.

You can reverse the order to make sqlcmd (ODBC) the default again.

Download and install sqlcmd (Go)

sqlcmd (Go) can be installed cross-platform, on Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux.

winget (Windows Package Manager CLI)

  1. Install the Windows Package Manager Client if you don't already have it.

  2. Run the following command to install sqlcmd (Go).

    winget install sqlcmd

Chocolatey

  1. Install Chocolatey if you don't already have it.

  2. Run the following command to install sqlcmd (Go).

    choco install sqlcmd

Direct download

  1. Download the corresponding -windows-x64.zip or -windows-arm.zip asset from the latest release of sqlcmd (Go) from the GitHub code repository.

  2. Extract the sqlcmd.exe file from the downloaded zip folder.

What problem will we solve?

This quickstart walks through the process of creating a local copy of a database, then querying it to analyze spending by customer.

Create a new container and restore a database

Create a new SQL Server instance in a container using the latest version of SQL Server. The command also restores the WideWorldImporters database.

Open a new terminal window and run the following command:

sqlcmd create mssql --name sql1 --accept-eula --using https://github.com/Microsoft/sql-server-samples/releases/download/wide-world-importers-v1.0/WideWorldImporters-Full.bak

Query the database in Azure Data Studio

Open Azure Data Studio and have a look at the data.

  1. In the same terminal window, run the following command:

    sqlcmd open ads

  2. Now that you have a local copy of your database, you can run queries. Here is a query you can use to analyze spending by customer:

    SELECT       bg.BuyingGroupName AS CustomerName
             ,COUNT(DISTINCT i.InvoiceID) AS InvoiceCount
             ,COUNT(il.InvoiceLineID) AS InvoiceLineCount
             ,SUM(il.LineProfit) AS Profit
             ,SUM(il.ExtendedPrice) AS ExtendedPrice
FROM         Sales.Invoices i
             INNER JOIN Sales.Customers c 
                 ON i.CustomerID = c.CustomerID
             INNER JOIN Sales.InvoiceLines il 
                 ON i.InvoiceID = il.InvoiceID
             INNER JOIN Sales.BuyingGroups bg 
                 ON c.BuyingGroupID = bg.BuyingGroupID
GROUP BY     bg.BuyingGroupName
UNION
SELECT       c.CustomerName
             ,COUNT(DISTINCT i.InvoiceID) AS InvoiceCount
             ,COUNT(il.InvoiceLineID) AS InvoiceLineCount
             ,SUM(il.LineProfit) AS Profit
             ,SUM(il.ExtendedPrice) AS ExtendedPrice
FROM         Sales.Invoices i
             INNER JOIN Sales.Customers c
                 ON i.CustomerID = c.CustomerID
             INNER JOIN Sales.InvoiceLines il
                 ON i.InvoiceID = il.InvoiceID
             LEFT JOIN Sales.BuyingGroups bg
                 ON c.BuyingGroupID = bg.BuyingGroupID
WHERE        bg.BuyingGroupID IS NULL
GROUP BY     c.CustomerName
ORDER BY     Profit DESC

How did we solve the problem?

You were able to quickly create a local copy of a database for development and testing purposes. With a single command, you created a new local instance and restored the most recent backup to it. You then ran another command to connect to it via Azure Data Studio. You then queried the database using Azure Data Studio to analyze spending by customer.

Clean up resources

When you're done trying out the database, delete the container with the following command:

sqlcmd delete --force

The --force flag is used here for convenience since we are in a demo environment. In most cases, it's better to leave the --force flag off to make sure you aren't inadvertently deleting a database you don't mean to.

Related content