# Ballista Command-line Interface
[Ballista](df) is a distributed query execution framework, written in Rust, that uses Apache Arrow as its in-memory format.
The Ballista CLI allows SQL queries to be executed by an in-process DataFusion context, or by a distributed
Ballista context.
```ignore
USAGE:
ballista-cli [FLAGS] [OPTIONS]
FLAGS:
-h, --help Prints help information
-q, --quiet Reduce printing other than the results and work quietly
-V, --version Prints version information
OPTIONS:
-c, --batch-size <batch-size> The batch size of each query, or use DataFusion default
-p, --data-path <data-path> Path to your data, default to current directory
-f, --file <file>... Execute commands from file(s), then exit
--format <format> Output format [default: table] [possible values: csv, tsv, table, json, ndjson]
--host <host> Ballista scheduler host
--port <port> Ballista scheduler port
```
## Example
Create a CSV file to query.
```bash,ignore
$ echo "1,2" > data.csv
```
```sql,ignore
$ ballista-cli
Ballista CLI v0.6.0
> CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE foo (a INT, b INT) STORED AS CSV LOCATION 'data.csv';
0 rows in set. Query took 0.001 seconds.
> SELECT * FROM foo;
+---+---+
| a | b |
+---+---+
| 1 | 2 |
+---+---+
1 row in set. Query took 0.017 seconds.
```
## Ballista-Cli
Build the `ballista-cli` without the feature of ballista.
```bash
cd arrow-datafusion/ballista-cli
cargo build
```
## Ballista
If you want to execute the SQL in ballista by `ballista-cli`, you must build/compile the `ballista-cli` with features of "ballista" first.
```bash
cd arrow-datafusion/ballista-cli
cargo build
```
The Ballista CLI can connect to a Ballista scheduler for query execution.
```bash
ballista-cli --host localhost --port 50050
```
[df]: https://crates.io/crates/datafusion