# Ballista Command-line Interface
[Ballista][ballista] 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 [OPTIONS]
OPTIONS:
-c, --batch-size <BATCH_SIZE>
The batch size of each query, or use Ballista default
--color
Enables console syntax highlighting
--concurrent-tasks <CONCURRENT_TASKS>
The max concurrent tasks, only for Ballista local mode. Default: all available cores
-f, --file <FILE>...
Execute commands from file(s), then exit
--format <FORMAT>
[default: table] [possible values: csv, tsv, table, json, nd-json, automatic]
-h, --help
Print help information
--host <HOST>
Ballista scheduler host
-p, --data-path <DATA_PATH>
Path to your data, default to current directory
--port <PORT>
Ballista scheduler port
-q, --quiet
Reduce printing other than the results and work quietly
-r, --rc <RC>...
Run the provided files on startup instead of ~/.ballistarc
-V, --version
Print version information
```
## Example
Create a CSV file to query.
```bash,ignore
$ echo "1,2" > data.csv
```
```sql,ignore
$ ballista-cli
Ballista CLI v0.12.0
> 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.
> \q
```
## Ballista-Cli
If you want to execute the SQL in ballista by `ballista-cli`, you must build/compile `ballista-cli` first.
```bash
cd datafusion-ballista/ballista-cli
cargo build
cargo install --path .
```
The Ballista CLI can connect to a Ballista scheduler for query execution.
```bash
ballista-cli --host localhost --port 50050
```
[ballista]: https://crates.io/crates/ballista