showplan, statistics io, and other commands produce their output while stored procedures are being run. The system procedures that you might use for checking table structure or indexes as you test optimization strategies can produce voluminous output when diagnostic information is being printed. You may want to have hard copies of your table schemas and index information, or you can use separate windows for running system procedures such as sp_helpindex.
For lengthy queries and batches, you may want the save showplan and statistics io output in files. You can do so by using “echo input” flag to isql. The syntax is:
isql -P password -e -i input_file -o outputfile
