Step 3: Formatting Output

The output from xSQL interactive commands can be redirected to a file or suppressed by the output command:

 
    output console|null|<filename>
     

This command switches output of the SQL engine between the console, a null device (suppress output) and a disk file. For example the following commands will direct the output of the successive commands and/or SQL statements to file S.csv, then redirect the output to the console:

     
    output S.csv
    select ...
     
    output console
     

Formatting Query Output

As mentioned in Step 2, the output from select statements can be formatted for more readable display. In fact there are a variety of ways to style the output and format specific types of output fields. To demonstrate the following examples we use a simple table Account which can be defined in a script file account.sql as follows:

 
    create table Account (userid integer primary key, name string, lastlog date);
    insert into Account values (101, 'Dennis Hamer', '2015-01-23 14:15:03');
    insert into Account values (102, 'Edith Jackson', '2015-02-12 19:30:16');
    insert into Account values (103, 'Eric Harmon', '2015-02-14 09:34:47');
     

Then start xSQL with the following command from directory eXtremeDB/samples/xsql/scripts:

 
    ..\..\..\target\bin\xsql -i
     

Output styles

By default xSQL displays query results as seen in previous examples. This is termed TEXT format. But output can also be displayed in HTML, XML, CSV, or LIST formats.

TEXT

For example, run the account.sql script and then run the following select:

 
    XSQL>script account.sql
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    userid  name    lastlog
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    101     Dennis Hamer    01/23/2015 14:15:03
    102     Edith Jackson   02/12/2015 19:30:16
    103     Eric Harmon     02/14/2015 09:34:47
     

This is the standard or TEXT format.

CSV

To switch the above query result to CSV format, we use the format command which has syntax:

 
    format CSV [delimiter ‘<C>’ [header on|off] ]
     

For example, to use the pipe '|' character to separate fields:

     
    XSQL>format CSV delimiter '|'
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    userid|name|lastlog|volume
    101|Dennis Hamer|01/23/2015 14:15:03|12.775843
    102|Edith Jackson|02/12/2015 19:30:16|420.885432
    103|Eric Harmon|02/14/2015 09:34:47|0.348857
     

And to remove the header line:

     
    XSQL>format CSV delimiter '|' header off
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    101|Dennis Hamer|01/23/2015 14:15:03|12.775843
    102|Edith Jackson|02/12/2015 19:30:16|420.885432
    103|Eric Harmon|02/14/2015 09:34:47|0.348857
     

LIST

The LIST option displays each field on a separate line, which can be convenient for long field values (i.e. arrays or strings):

 
    XSQL>format LIST
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    userid: 101
    name: Dennis Hamer
    lastlog: 01/23/2015 14:15:03
    volume: 12.775843
    -------------------------------------------------------
    userid: 102
    name: Edith Jackson
    lastlog: 02/12/2015 19:30:16
    volume: 420.885432
    -------------------------------------------------------
    userid: 103
    name: Eric Harmon
    lastlog: 02/14/2015 09:34:47
    volume: 0.348857
    -------------------------------------------------------
     
    Selected records: 3
     

HTML

The HTML option represents the output as an HTML table:

 
    XSQL>format HTML
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    <table border>
    <tr><th>userid</th><th>name</th><th>lastlog</th><th>volume</th></tr>
    <tr><td>101</td><td>Dennis Hamer</td><td>01/23/2015 14:15:03</td><td>12.775843</td></tr>
    <tr><td>102</td><td>Edith Jackson</td><td>02/12/2015 19:30:16</td><td>420.885432</td></tr>
    <tr><td>103</td><td>Eric Harmon</td><td>02/14/2015 09:34:47</td><td>0.348857</td></tr>
    </table>
     

XML

The XML option displays tags corresponding to the table and field names:

 
    XSQL>format XML
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    <Account>
    <userid>101</userid>
    <name>Dennis Hamer</name>
    <lastlog>01/23/2015 14:15:03</lastlog>
    <volume>12.775843</volume>
    </ Account >
    < Account >
    <userid>102</userid>
    <name>Edith Jackson</name>
    <lastlog>02/12/2015 19:30:16</lastlog>
    <volume>420.885432</volume>
    </ Account >
    < Account >
    <userid>103</userid>
    <name>Eric Harmon</name>
    <lastlog>02/14/2015 09:34:47</lastlog>
    <volume>0.348857</volume>
    </ Account >
     

Numerical format

Often it is desirable to reformat numerical data in query output. This is easily done by means of the format commands: numformat, dtformat, strformat, and arrayformat.

numformat

The numformat command uses the standard C printf() type format string; for example:

 
    XSQL>numformat "%6.2f"
     

For example, we could use the following numformat command to round values to two decimal places:

 
    XSQL>create table N(name string, value double);
    XSQL>insert into N values('Pi', 3.14159265359);
    XSQL>insert into N values('e', 2.71828);
    XSQL>select * from N;
     
    name    value
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pi      3.14159265359
    e       2.71828
     
    Selected records: 2
    XSQL>numformat "%6.2f"
    XSQL>select * from N;
 
    name    value
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Pi        3.14
    e         2.72
 
    Selected records: 2
     

Date/Time format

By default, xSQL will display date fields, like lastlog in the current locale settings for the host computer. For example:

 
    XSQL>select lastlog from Account;
    lastlog
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    01/23/2015 14:15:03
    02/12/2015 19:30:16
    02/14/2015 09:34:47
     

But we can reformat the output using command dtformat to display the date in international date format with the time in 12-hour notation as follows:

 
    XSQL>dtformat "%d/%m/%Y %I:%M:%S %p"
    XSQL>select * from Account;
    userid  name    lastlog
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    101     Dennis Hamer    23/01/2015 02:15:03 PM
    102     Edith Jackson   12/02/2015 07:30:16 PM
    103     Eric Harmon     14/02/2015 09:34:47 AM
     

(Note that the format specification string is a string suitable for the C strftime() function and allowable options depend on the version of the glibc library installed on the development system.)

To restore output to the current locale settings:

 
    XSQL>dtformat "%c"
     

String format

We might want to restrict string length in query output to a fixed width. For example:

 
    XSQL>create table A (strlen integer, s string);
    XSQL>insert into A values (33, 'A string containing 33 characters');
    XSQL>insert into A values (14, 'A short string');
    XSQL>select * from A;
    strlen  s
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    33      A string containing 33 characters
    14      A short string
     

Then restrict the width in output to 20 characters as follows:

 
    XSQL>strformat width=20
    XSQL>select * from A;
    strlen  s
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    33      A string containing>
    14      A short string
     

Note that field s in the second query is truncated to length 20 with the > character indicating truncation. To return to the full width of string fields, specify zero width as follows:

 
    XSQL>strformat width=0
     

It is also possible to use the index operator “[from:to]“ with strings to extract a range of characters. For example:

 
    XSQL>select s[1:7] from A;
    #1
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    A strin
    A short
     

But in most cases it is preferable to use the substr() function (demonstrated in step 6) to extract substrings from character string fields.

Sequence format

Fields of the sequence data type can be ungainly in query output. By default xSQL displays the first 5 and last 5 elements of a sequence with an expression like “…<N element(s)>…” in the middle. For example, if we start xSQL with command

 
    xSQL –i –f IBM-q1-2013.sql
     

the script creates table QuoteIBM and initializes it with some historical data from 2013. The sequence field high can be displayed as follows:

 
    XSQL>numformat "%6.2f"
    XSQL>select symbol, high from Quote;
    symbol high
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {196.35, 196.29, 194.46, 193.78, 193.30, ...<50 element(s)>..., 213.17, 212.81, 212.50, 212.16, 213.44}
     

With command seqformat we can limit the number of first and last elements to display. There are two options for how the elements are displayed. The short format displays the elements in order as above; the long format displays the index of each element followed by its value. For example we could reformat the sequence output as follows:

 
    XSQL>seqformat short 3 3
    XSQL> select symbol, high from Quote;
    symbol high
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {196.35, 196.29, 194.46, ...<54 element(s)>..., 212.5, 212.16, 213.44}
     
    XSQL>seqformat long 2 1
    XSQL>select symbol, high from Quote;
    symbol high
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {0:196.35, 1:196.29, ...<57 element(s)>..., 59:213.44}
     
    XSQL>seqformat short 3 0
    XSQL>select symbol, high from QuoteIBM;
    symbol high
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {196.35, 196.29, 194.46, ...<57 element(s)>...}
     
    XSQL>seqformat short 0 0
    XSQL>select symbol, high from QuoteIBM;
    symbol high
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {...<60 element(s)>...}
     

It is also possible to use the index operator [from:to] with sequences to extract a range of values. For example:

 
    XSQL>select symbol, high[1:3] from Quote;
    symbol #2
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {196.29, 194.46, 193.78}
     
     
    XSQL>select symbol, high[57:] from Quote;
    #1
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    IBM {212.50, 212.16, 213.44}
     

Array format

With command arrayformat we can limit the number of first and last elements to display for fields of type array. For example, we could create and initialize a table B as follows:

 
    XSQL>create table B (id integer primary key, arr array(char(10)));
    XSQL>insert into B values (1, ['zero', 'one', 'two', 'three', 'four', 'five',
    'six', 'seven', 'eight', 'nine', 'ten']);
    XSQL>select * from B;
    id      arr
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    1       [zero, one, two, three, four, ...<1 element(s)>..., six, seven, eight, nine, ten]
     

Note that there are 11 elements in the array arr, but only the first and last 5 elements appear in the query output with "...<1 element(s)>...," in the middle. We can restrict the number of elements shown by specifying how many elements from the beginning of the array and how many from the end of the array to display.

And there are two options for how the elements are displayed. The short format displays the elements in order as above; the long format displays the index of each element followed by its value. For example we could reformat the sequence output as follows:

     
    XSQL>arrayformat long 3 3
    XSQL>select * from B;
    id      arr
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    1       [0:zero, 1:one, 2:two, ...<5 element(s)>..., 8:eight, 9:nine, 10:ten]
     
    XSQL>arrayformat short
    XSQL>select * from B;
    id      arr
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    1	[zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten]
     

 

Now that we have seen how to tailor output format, it is useful to explore some of the powerful features of xSQL, like Distributed Database Sharding (step 4), Using Configuration Files (step 5), and more.