The ; (semicolon) statement terminator signals the end of a command; for example:
SELECT "SAMPLE" "BASIC";
In interactive ESSCMD, pressing the Enter key signals ESSCMD that the command is complete. The statement terminator is optional.
In an ESSCMD script file, you should use the terminator, even though it is optional, if a command has many parameters. Doing so is especially important to signal the end of the parameter list if some parameters are optional.
If you omit some optional parameters and do not use a semicolon to end the list, ESSCMD looks for the remaining values in the next command in the file, leading to unpredictable results.
The SETAPPSTATE and SETDBSTATE commands, defined in the Oracle Essbase Technical Reference, are examples of commands that you should terminate with a semicolon to prevent confusion in processing.