Spool Command: Do not output SQL statement to file

Question

I am wanting to output a Query to a CSV file and am using the below as a small test;

spool c:\test.csv 
select /*csv*/ username, user_id, created from all_users;
spool off;

but the output has the actual select statment as the first line

> select /*csv*/ username    user_id     created from all_users
USERNAME    USER_ID CREATED
REPORT  52  11-Sep-13
WEBFOCUS    51  18-Sep-12

Is there a way to prevent this? I tried SET Heading Off thinking that might do it, but it did not change. I am using SQL Developer an running as script.

Thanks Bruce

Answer 1

Unfortunately SQL Developer doesn't fully honour the set echo off command that would (appear to) solve this in SQL*Plus.

The only workaround I've found for this is to save what you're doing as a script, e.g. test.sql with:

set echo off
spool c:\test.csv 
select /*csv*/ username, user_id, created from all_users;
spool off;

And then from SQL Developer, only have a call to that script:

@test.sql

And run that as a script (F5).

Saving as a script file shouldn't be much of a hardship anyway for anything other than an ad hoc query; and running that with @ instead of opening the script and running it directly is only a bit of a pain.

---

A bit of searching found the same solution on the SQL Developer forum, and the development team suggest it's intentional behaviour to mimic what SQL*Plus does; you need to run a script with @ there too in order to hide the query text.

Answer 2

set echo off
spool c:\test.csv 
select /*csv*/ username, user_id, created from all_users;
spool off;

Answer 3

My shell script calls the sql file and executes it. The spool output had the SQL query at the beginning followed by the query result.

This did not resolve my problem:

set echo off

This resolved my problem:

set verify off

Answer 4

You can directly export the query result with export option in the result grig. This export has various options to export. I think this will work.

Answer 5

Exec the query in TOAD or SQL DEVELOPER

---select /*csv*/ username, user_id, created from all_users;

Save in .SQL format in "C" drive

--- x.sql

execute command

---- set serveroutput on
     spool y.csv
     @c:\x.sql
     spool off;