SQL Dialects

sql-splitter supports four SQL dialects.

MySQL

Source: mysqldump

Detection signals:

• MySQL dump / MariaDB dump header comment
• Conditional comments (/*!40..., /*!50...)
• LOCK TABLES
• Backtick quoting (`table`)

Features supported:

• CREATE TABLE with inline keys
• INSERT INTO (single and multi-row)
• CREATE INDEX
• ALTER TABLE
• Session commands (SET, USE) are recognized but carry no table, so split does not write them to any output file

Example:

CREATE TABLE `users` (
`id` INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
`name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
`email` VARCHAR(255),
INDEX `idx_email` (`email`)
) ENGINE=InnoDB;

INSERT INTO `users` VALUES (1, 'Alice', 'alice@example.com');

PostgreSQL

Source: pg_dump (plain text format)

Detection signals:

• pg_dump / PostgreSQL database dump header comment
• COPY ... FROM stdin
• search_path
• Dollar quoting ($$) and CREATE EXTENSION

Features supported:

• CREATE TABLE
• COPY ... FROM stdin (tab-separated data)
• INSERT INTO
• CREATE INDEX
• ALTER TABLE
• Sequences (CREATE SEQUENCE) are recognized but carry no table, so split does not write them to any output file

Example:

CREATE TABLE users (
id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(255)
);

COPY users (id, name, email) FROM stdin;
1 Alice alice@example.com
2 Bob bob@example.com
\.

Note: Binary/custom pg_dump formats are not supported. Use pg_dump -Fp (plain).

SQLite

Source: .dump command

Detection signals:

• SQLite header comment
• PRAGMA statements
• BEGIN TRANSACTION

Features supported:

• CREATE TABLE
• INSERT INTO
• CREATE INDEX
• PRAGMA statements are recognized but carry no table, so split does not write them to any output file

Example:

CREATE TABLE users (
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
name TEXT NOT NULL,
email TEXT
);

INSERT INTO users VALUES (1, 'Alice', 'alice@example.com');

MSSQL

Source: sqlcmd, SSMS “Generate Scripts”

Detection signals:

• SET ANSI_NULLS, SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER
• GO batch separator
• IDENTITY(
• Square bracket quoting ([table])
• NVARCHAR, N'...' literals

Features supported:

• CREATE TABLE
• INSERT INTO
• CREATE INDEX
• GO batch handling

Example:

CREATE TABLE [users] (
[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,
[name] NVARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
[email] NVARCHAR(255)
);
GO

INSERT INTO [users] ([name], [email]) VALUES (N'Alice', N'alice@example.com');
GO

Auto-Detection

sql-splitter scores dialect markers in the first 8 KB of the file. Ambiguous files default to MySQL. Override with --dialect:

sql-splitter split dump.sql --dialect=postgres
sql-splitter convert dump.sql --from mysql --to postgres

Detection can guess wrong when marker-like text appears in data or comments early in the file — see Known Limitations for the failure modes, plus what each dialect parser does not handle (stored procedures, binary formats, and more).