Passing result of query to a varibale in sh script

　　If you have an utility to access your db, and this utility returns a scalar result, then you can use that to script.

For example, this is with oracle.

# su - oracle
/usr/users/oracle>
/usr/users/oracle> a=`sqlplus -s '/ as sysdba' << EOF
> set feedback off pages 0
> select max(1) from dual;
> EOF`
/usr/users/oracle> echo $a
1
/usr/users/oracle>