A. SQL Server doesn't have a handy SPOOL command like Oracle does for writing to files, but there are a number of ways of doing what you want.
1. For reading, use xp_cmdshell and the ECHO command. Use the > or >> redirection symbols to either create or append to a file.
xp_cmdshell "@ECHO test message >> C:\file.fil"
2. Put the information you want into a table (note this can't be an ordinary temporary table, but it can be a global temporary table) and then bcp it out to a file via xp_cmdshell.
xp_cmdshell "bcp <dbname>..<tablename> out c:\file.fil -Usa -P<password> -c"
3. BCP or BULK INSERT (SQL 7 only) can also be used to read in a flat file into a table, from where it can be processed.
4. Write your own extended stored procedure. As this is a C program it can use standard file access commands to achieve whatever you want.
5. Run the select through ISQL via xp_cmdshell and use the -o parameter to output the results to a file. This example uses the -E parameter to avoild hard-coding a userid.
declare @str varchar(255)
select @str = 'isql -Q"select * from <tablename>" -E -oc:\file.fil'
exec master..xp_cmdshell @str
6. There is a free XP - xp_query_to_file - at www.dbmaint.com
