Suppose, for whatever (legit!) reason, you want to know what operating system the SQL Server database engine you are connecting to is running.

There are three ways to do this:

  1. System views
  2. @@Version property
  3. xp_cmdshell

System Views

There are two system views that you can use for this purpose:

  1. sys.dm_os_windows_info
  2. sys.dm_os_host_info

The first one is probably not the best to use, given that SQL Server can now run on Linux.

@@Version Property

SQL Server exposes the @@Version property that you can query directly

xp_cmdshell

This is generally not an option because no serious DBA will enable this. It is disabled by default.

Let us then confine ourselves to the two remaining options.

We will need the following packages:

  1. Microsoft.Data.SqlClient - to connect to and interact with the database server
  2. Dapper - to make the former easier.
dotnet add package Microsoft.Data.SqlClient
dotnet add package Dapper

I have written extensively on using Dapper.

We can get the server property @@version as a string as follows:

using (var cn = new SqlConnection("data source=localhost;trustservercertificate=true;uid=sa;pwd=YourStrongPassword123"))
{
    var result = cn.QuerySingle<string>("SELECT @@version");
    Console.WriteLine(result);
}

This will print something like the following:

Microsoft SQL Server 2022 (RTM-CU19) (KB5054531) - 16.0.4195.2 (X64) 
        Apr 18 2025 13:42:14 
        Copyright (C) 2022 Microsoft Corporation
        Developer Edition (64-bit) on Linux (Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS) <X64>

We can also use the system view sys.dm_os_host_info.

Given that it is a known view, we can get its columns.

SELECT dm_os_host_info.host_platform,
       dm_os_host_info.host_distribution,
       dm_os_host_info.host_release,
       dm_os_host_info.host_service_pack_level,
       dm_os_host_info.host_sku,
       dm_os_host_info.os_language_version,
       dm_os_host_info.host_architecture FROM sys.dm_os_host_info

From this, we have options:

  1. Create a type to store the information
  2. Leverage the fact that Dapper supports dynamic types.

The type would look like this:

public sealed class HostInfo
{
    public string host_platform { get; set; }
    public string host_distribution { get; set; }
    public string host_release { get; set; }
    public string host_service_pack_level { get; set; }
    public string host_sku { get; set; }
    public string os_language_version { get; set; }
    public string host_architecture { get; set; }
}

And we can query and print the results like this:

using (var cn = new SqlConnection("data source=localhost;trustservercertificate=true;uid=sa;pwd=YourStrongPassword123"))
{
    var result = cn.QuerySingle<HostInfo>("SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_host_info");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host platform: {result.host_platform}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host distribution: {result.host_distribution}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host release: {result.host_release}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host service pack level: {result.host_service_pack_level}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host SKU: {result.host_sku}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host OS Language Version: {result.os_language_version}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host architecture: {result.host_architecture}");
}

This will print something like this:

Host platform: Linux
Host distribution: Ubuntu
Host release: 22.04
Host service pack level: 
Host SKU: 
Host OS Language Version: 0
Host architecture: X64

Rather than go to the bother of creating a type, we can leverage the fact that Dapper supports dynamic types.

We can achieve the same result as follows:

using (var cn = new SqlConnection("data source=localhost;trustservercertificate=true;uid=sa;pwd=YourStrongPassword123"))
{
    var result = cn.QuerySingle("SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_host_info");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host platform: {result.host_platform}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host distribution: {result.host_distribution}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host release: {result.host_release}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host service pack level: {result.host_service_pack_level}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host SKU: {result.host_sku}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host OS Language Version: {result.os_language_version}");
    Console.WriteLine($"Host architecture: {result.host_architecture}");
}

Here, result is a dynamic type, as we are using cn.QuerySingle rather than cn.QuerySingle<T>

Now, you may wonder if there are any security implications to this approach.

There are!

You will need some permissions to access this information.

The documentation says the following:

On SQL Server 2019 (15.x) and earlier versions, the SELECT permission on sys.dm_os_host_info is granted to the public role by default. If revoked, you require VIEW SERVER STATE permission on the server.

On SQL Server 2022 (16.x) and later versions, you require VIEW SERVER PERFORMANCE STATE permission on the server.

However, the solution using @@version has no such restrictions; this information is available to low-privilege users.

TLDR

SQL Server exposes properties and system views that you can query to obtain some server information.

The code is in my GitHub.

Happy hacking!