Starting the Shell for Interactive Input

  To enter MaxL statements interactively at the command line, invoke the shell at your operating-system prompt.

For example:

essmsh

  To enter MaxL statements interactively after logging in at invocation time, use the -l flag.

For example:

essmsh -l Admin password
...
49 - User logged in: [Admin].

  To enter MaxL statements interactively and supply command-line arguments to represent variables that you will use in your interactive session, use the -a flag.

For example:

essmsh -a Admin password Sample.Basic 
...
login $1 $2;

49 - User logged in: [admin].

alter database $3.$4 enable aggregate_missing;

72 - Database altered: ['sample'.'basic'].

In the above example, $1, $2, $3, and $4 are positional parameter variables representing arguments entered after essmsh at invocation time, in the order in which they were entered.