sqlcmd - connect to local instance of SQLEXPRESS

Question

I want to run a .sql batch script to delete records from a number of tables from cmd window. So, for that I am trying to connect to my local instance of SQLEXPRESS using following command-

sqlcmd -e -s \SQLEXPRESS

However, I am not able to connect and getting following error:

'Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [2]'.

One more weird thing that I notice from the error message is that above command is trying to connect to SQL Server 2005 whereas the instance running on my machine is SQLEXPRESS 2008.

Can anyone please guide.

P.S. I am using Windows Authentication to connect to SQLEXPRESS which is when I go to connect using Mgmt Studio.

Answer 1

Sorry about the late response (just came across your question when searching for something unrelated), but it looks to me like you're just using the wrong case on your arguments:

sqlcmd -E -S .\SQLEXPRESS

-S means "server", whereas -s means "colseparator" (and similarly, lowercase e means echo rather than integrated auth)