Extract text from database scripts (SQL)
To convert SQL scripts to another format, you need MySQL or other Database software.
To convert other file formats to the "Database Query Script" file type, you need software like MySQL or a similar tool.
The .SQL file is a plain text file containing Structured Query Language instructions used to define, modify, or extract data from relational databases. These files typically act as blueprints, update scripts, or full database backups (dumps) for systems like MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
While simple in structure, .SQL files pose significant real-world challenges. First, they are highly rigid and dialect-specific. A .SQL database dump exported from PostgreSQL will almost certainly throw syntax errors if imported directly into Microsoft SQL Server. Second, backup .SQL files frequently exceed gigabytes in size because they represent data as millions of text-based INSERT statements. Opening a massive .SQL file in standard text editors like Windows Notepad will cause the application to freeze or crash. Users often need the underlying table data but lack the time or technical environment to spin up a local database server just to read it. If you need to analyze the raw data without a database, convert the .SQL file to CSV to extract records into a clean spreadsheet format. For web development or NoSQL integration, converting to JSON is the most pragmatic choice. For quick readability or cross-platform sharing, convert to standard TXT to ensure the original character encoding (such as UTF-8 or UTF-16 LE) is preserved safely.
Convert.Guru analyzes your SQL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted DDL, DB, SQLITE, BAK, PDF, TXT, DATABASE, MWB, DUMP, ZIP, ERD, CODE and SQLITE3 files.
If you want to convert SQL file to CSV, JSON, SQLITE, DAX, LINQ, PDF, DB, SQLITE3, MDB, ACCDB, DBF or ODB, you can use MySQL or similar software from the "Relational Database Scripting" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert NDF, SQLITE3, BAK, RDB, DB4, MDF, MDB, LDF, DB, DB3, SQLITE or FRM files to SQL, try MySQL or another comparable tool in the "Relational Database Scripting" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our SQL converter.