Return BCP Output as a message from SQL Server 2012 (read by MATLAB)

Question

I create a table in my stored procedure, export its content using BCP and then drop this table. BCP command looks like:

SET @sqlop = 'BCP "SELECT blah FROM MYTABLE" queryout "' + @txt4print* 
             + '" -b 50000 -c -t"," -S"server" -U"uname" -P"pswd"'
exec master..xp_cmdshell @sqlop       --, NO_OUTPUT

Typically, if there is an error in the store procedure, it is printed as a Message in SQL Server. However, the output from BCP is not printed as a message. So I'm not able to capture the error instance in MATLAB. Is there a way to catch the string error as shown below? Can this output be returned as a Message from SQL Server?

I'm not an advanced SQL programmer. Thanks!

Answer 1

Well you have output here so you should be able to capture that output and then manually force an error from it.

DECLARE @Output TABLE (OutputMessage NVARCHAR(4000));

SET @sqlop = 'BCP "SELECT blah FROM MYTABLE" queryout "' + @txt4print* 
             + '" -b 50000 -c -t"," -S"server" -U"uname" -P"pswd"'

INSERT INTO @Output
exec master..xp_cmdshell @sqlop       --, NO_OUTPUT

DELETE FROM @Output WHERE OutputMessage IS NULL

DECLARE @Statement NVARCHAR(MAX)

WHILE (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM @Output) > 0
BEGIN
    SELECT TOP 1 @Statement = OutputMessage FROM @Output
    IF @Statement LIKE '%Error%'
    BEGIN
      SET @Statement = 'Unexpected error in procedure: ' + @Statement
      RAISERROR(@Statement, 16, 1)
    END
END

Alternatively if you just want a message and not an error, you should be able to use PRINT for similar effect.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms176047.aspx