Denver,
If you want something like "select entity, activity, start_time from summary" then it needs to be issued from a 'dsmadmc' or other TSM Server command prompt, because that is directly interacting with the TSM Server table named SUMMARY.
From the TSM Client, if you want to see a summary of how many files, directories, and bytes are in a QUERY BACKUP or Q ARCHIVE (before you perform a Restore or Retrieve) then you can use the TSM Client "-QUERYSUMMARY" option at the end of those commands -- but that has nothing to do with the TSM Server SUMMARY table.
You could (in theory) write a script which resides on a TSM Client system, which performs the SELECT from the SUMMARY table -- but then again, if the TSM Client already has the Admin (Server) interface installed, that capability exists.
I'm not sure exactly what your question was referring to, so please feel free to clarify your requirements. Hope this helps.
Best Regards,
Robert Luehrs