MS SQL Semicolon on declaring variables

Hi, Fist at all, great work with DBeaver. Love it as I can connect to multiple servers and types of databases from one single place.

However, I have found a problem. If I have this:

DECLARE @sc_CountryOfExport nvarchar(13)='United States';
SELECT * FROM dbo.Country WHERE [Name] = @sc_CountryOfExport;

And execute the script (not execute the statement) I get an error that I need to declare scalar @sc_countryOfExport. If I remove the semicolon then it works OK.

The semicolon is a ‘statement terminator’ but I don’t think that means that the next statement gets a different context (like the keyword GO). The reason why I say this is because in the Microsoft tools, both forms (with and without semicolon) work exactly the same.

However in Microsoft tools, if I insert a GO in between the 2 lines, then it behaves like in DBeaver. As per the documentation, GO is a “batch” terminator (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188037.aspx)

So it seems like DBeaver is treating a statement terminator as a batch terminator. This could be very problematic, because very soon semicolon will be mandatory and MS tools will behave differently (we’ll have to go back to those, instead of using awesome DBeaver) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177563(v=sql.110).aspx

Notice that DECLARE is considered a statement and it serves to declare variables in the “batch”. So DECLARE will have a semicolon and DBeaver will not work under this scenario. https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188927(v=sql.110).aspx (The example in the above page does not run DBeaver due to the semicolon in the DECLARE lines)

I’m using DBeaver 3.8.0

Thanks!

[serge-rider]

Yes, SQL Server is special.

When you execute in script mode (alt+x) then DBeaver splits script text on statements (using ; and GO) and then executes statements one by one. In opposite to MySQL each statement is executed as a batch and variables context is lost after every statement execution. For DBeaver there is no difference between ; and GO in script mode - they are just delimiters.

If you need to execute your script as a single batch - use query execution (CTRL+Enter). You can select whole script (CTRL+A) and then run it.

So far I don’t see how I can improve this.

[jetzerb]

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Edit 2: In Window >> Preferences >> Database >> Editors >> SQL Editor >> SQL Processing, under the “Delimiters” section

1. Clear the “Statements delimiter” text box
2. Uncheck the “Ignore native delimiter” box
3. Uncheck the “Blank line is statement delimiter” box

Now the only statement delimiter left is the “native” delimiter, which for MSSQL is “GO”

I believe this resolves the issue, as well as my observation below about the merge command. Note that depending on how many different database technologies you work with, you may have to keep this preferences window open and modify the settings depending on what DB you’re querying…

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As a consequence of the way DBeaver splits script text on statements (using ; and GO) and then executes statements one by one (per Serge’s comment above on 2017-03-25), the only way to execute a merge command on MSSQL is to highlight it and hit CTRL-Enter.

Sample Test Script:

drop table if exists #test;
create table #test (id int, name varchar(10));

merge into #test tgt
using (values
	 (1,'Alice')
	,(2,'Bob')
) src(id,name)
on tgt.id = src.id
when matched then
	update
	set name = src.name
when not matched then
	insert (    id,    name)
	values (src.id,src.name)
; -- <<--- Note the presence of the semi-colon

If you run the script (ALT-X) you get

Error occurred during SQL query execution

Reason: SQL Error [10713] [S0001]: A MERGE statement must be terminated by a semi-colon (😉.

because evidently the text between but not including the semi-colon is executed.

Error?	Highlighting	Scenario
Yes	None	Run script (ALT-X)
Yes	Entire Script	Run script (ALT-X)
Yes	None	Run statement (CTRL-Enter) when cursor is positioned within the statement
No	Entire Statement	Run statement (CTRL-Enter)
No	Entire Script	Run statement (CTRL-Enter)–But this runs the entire script (all highlighted statements)

This is still true as of version 6.2.5.

A (probably easy) fix for the merge problem is to append a semi-colon to each block of text that DBeaver executes. MSSQL commands will always work with a semi-colon terminator, but sometimes not work without one.

But the larger issue could be fixed if DBeaver keeps its current script parsing logic, except for MSSQL, use only go (on a line by itself) as the delimiter between blocks of text to execute, ignoring semicolons completely. Then DBeaver would treat MSSQL scripts the same way as SSMS, Azure Data Studio. SQLCMD, etc.