Incorrect syntax near 'GO'

Question

How can I execute the following SQL inside a single command (single execution) through ADO.NET?

ALTER TABLE [MyTable]     ADD NewCol INT  GO  UPDATE [MyTable]      SET [NewCol] = 1 

The batch separator GO is not supported, and without it the second statement fails.

Are there any solutions to this other than using multiple command executions?

Answer 1

The GO keyword is not T-SQL, but a SQL Server Management Studio artifact that allows you to separate the execution of a script file in multiple batches.I.e. when you run a T-SQL script file in SSMS, the statements are run in batches separated by the GO keyword. More details can be found here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188037.aspx

If you read that, you'll see that sqlcmd and osql do also support GO.

SQL Server doesn't understand the GO keyword. So if you need an equivalent, you need to separate and run the batches individually on your own.

Answer 2

Remove the GO:

String sql = "ALTER TABLE  [MyTable] ADD NewCol INT;"; cmd = new SqlCommand(sql, conn); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); sql = "UPDATE [MyTable] SET [NewCol] = 1"; cmd = new SqlCommand(sql, conn); cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); 

It seems that you can use the Server class for that. Here is an article:

C#: Executing batch T-SQL Scripts containing GO statements