How to get SQLCMD to output errors and warnings only

Question

How can you get SQLCMD, when executing a SQL script file, to just output any errors or warnings it encounters?

I essentially dont want information based messages to be output.

Answer 1

It's not possible to prevent SQLCMD returning non-error output messages by passing it a parameter.

However, what you can do is redirect error messages to STDERR, then direct all other messages to NUL.

This is done by passing the -r parameter. From books online:

-r[ 0 | 1] msgs to stderr

Redirects the error message output to the screen (stderr). If you do not specify a parameter or if you specify 0, only error messages that have a severity level of 11 or higher are redirected. If you specify 1, all error message output including PRINT is redirected. Has no effect if you use -o. By default, messages are sent to stdout.

Set -r depending on exactly which error messages you want to display, but to display all error message output, an example command would be:

sqlcmd -Q "select 1 as a; select 1/0 as b" -E -r1 1> NUL

Answer 2

Just as an addition to this, if you are sending errors out to file, I found this https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/sql-tools/the-sqlcmd-workbench/

which I have used. If you omit setting the OUT, then you only get an error log created. So you have a command like this :

sqlcmd -x -E -S MyServer -i C:\MySQLBatchToRun.sql 

Then in MySQLBatchToRun.sql , something like this

USE MyDatabase
:Error C:\MyErrorLog.txt
:r C:\MySQLScript.sql
GO

In MySQLScript.sql you have the actual SQL to run. It's a bit convoluted, but works. The only issue I have is that it seems to create an empty error log file, even if there is not an error.